Chapter III: The Development of the Absolute Monarchy (1)

Almost at the moment that the Crusades broke out, an
institution commenced its aggrandisement which has, perhaps,
contributed more than any other to the formation of modern
society, and to the fusion of all the social elements into two
powers, the government and the people,--the institution of
Royalty.--GUIZOT.[m]

[Sidenote: [1180-1270 A.D.]]

Philip Augustus, Louis’ son and successor, who was about fifteen years of age when he began to reign, was already the nursling of court adulation and homage. His predecessors had not attained dignity sufficient to expose them to this bane of the royal nature. Congratulations, couched in the language of oriental hyperbole, had greeted his birth. He was styled the _Dieu-donné_, “the God-given”; and self-constituted laureates began already to celebrate the majesty of the monarch of the French. Formerly, the surrounding nobles had disdained to dispute court favour or influence; but the first years of Philip’s reign were taken up with the rivalry of the houses of Flanders and Champagne, which each sought to be the masters and ministers of the young sovereign. Henry II of England gave his support to the counts of Champagne, and the partisans of Flanders were obliged to retire from Paris. They formed a league, and menaced war; but Philip, with the English monarch’s aid, easily overcame the malcontents. Henry showed generosity on this occasion. Instead of profiting by the divisions of the French, and keeping them alive, he frankly supported the young king against his refractory barons. He was king himself, and sympathised with royalty. Philip ill repaid this kindness: he imitated his father’s policy in seducing the sons of the English monarch from their allegiance; and their frequent ingratitude at length broke the heart of the sensitive and passionate monarch. Richard, duke of Aquitaine, known as Cœur de Lion, and his father’s successor on the throne, was the especial friend and ally of Philip in these quarrels; and for a long time the princes shared the same tent and the same bed.

Meantime a third crusade began to be preached. This prevalent enthusiasm, like the rebellions of an oppressed yet brave people, was sure to arouse itself and reawaken as soon as time had elapsed sufficient to allow the disasters of the past to be forgotten. Saladin had recently taken Jerusalem. Fugitives instantly filled Europe with the dismal tidings. The cry for a crusade became general: it was no longer, however, the church that called a council to debate and decide upon the question; another power had arisen to rob the clergy of their initiative. The king called a parliament (_parlement_) of his barons at Gisors, and there a third crusade was determined upon. Cœur de Lion was the first to assume the cross; and king Philip, only hurt at being anticipated, followed his example. Frederick Barbarossa also took the same resolution.

[Sidenote: [1190-1194 A.D.]]

In June of the year 1190, Philip Augustus received the pilgrim’s scrip and staff from the hands of the abbot of St. Denis. Richard received his at Tours; and it was remarked, as an omen, that, as he leaned on the staff, it broke under his weight. In order to avoid the disasters of former crusades, they were to proceed to Palestine by sea. The two kings wintered in Sicily on their voyage thither, and there laid the foundation of their future jealousy and hate. The crusaders found the barons of Syria engaged in the siege of Acre. Their arrival hastened its surrender, and at the same time marked it with crime. Richard caused upwards of two thousand captives to be massacred in cold blood, and Philip was guilty of a similar piece of cruelty. The monarchs, indeed, had some slight breach of stipulations to allege, or might excuse their conduct as a reprisal for that of Saladin, who put to death many of the prisoners whom he made at the battle of Tiberias, more especially all those whose tonsure marked them to belong to the order of the Templars. It was thus that the ferocity of oriental manners came to alloy the more generous spirit of chivalry. In Palestine the French learned to be merciless towards their religious enemies, and hence it was that the fair page of their history was soon afterwards stained by the massacre of those whom they called heretics at home.

[Sidenote: [1194-1200 A.D.]]

Philip Augustus could not long endure the superior renown and prowess of Cœur de Lion. He seized the pretext of an illness to quit Palestine and abandon the field of glory to his rival. Returning home, he besought the pope to release him from the oath which bound him to respect the rights and territories of a brother crusader. The pontiff refused; but Philip felt himself sufficiently absolved by the Macchiavellian law of monarchical policy: and fortune, in making Richard fall captive to the duke of Austria, on his return from the Holy Land, seemed to favour the envious designs of the French monarch. Philip no sooner was informed of Richard’s captivity, than he leagued with his brother John, and invaded Normandy. He took several towns and castles, but was repulsed from before Rouen. At length Richard was released, or, as Philip wrote to his confederate, “the devil broke loose.” We expect on this occasion to read of a furious war betwixt the sovereigns. And yet no brilliant feat, no general engagement, marked that which ensued. Petty treason and short truce, varied by a skirmish or a marauding party, were all the effects produced by the envy of Philip and the resentment of the lion-hearted king. The death of the latter by an arrow-shot, as he besieged a castle in the Limousin, left a less formidable rival to Philip in the person of King John (1199). The writer of fiction never imagined a baser character than that of John. His cowardice and meanness form a phenomenon and an exception in the feudal ages. The nullity of such a rival converted Philip Augustus from the powerless intriguer to the conqueror and the hero.[b]

PRINCE ARTHUR OF BRITTANY

[Sidenote: [1200-1204 A.D.]]

Although Richard on his death-bed declared John to be his heir, the crown of England descended by right of primogeniture to the young prince Arthur, son of Geoffrey, duke of Brittany and the elder brother of John; the latter seized it. But Anjou, Poitou, and Touraine, weary of English domination, declared for Arthur, and invoked Philip’s protection. The king of France took up Arthur’s cause and then abandoned it (1200), after obtaining from John the advantage his political selfish policy was seeking.[c]

But Arthur had been accepted by the Bretons at his birth as a liberator and avenger. Old Eleanor, alone, held out against her grandson, for her son John, and for the unity of the English realm, which the accession of Arthur would have divided. Arthur, in fact, held that unity very cheap. He offered the king of France to cede Normandy to him, provided he might have Brittany, Maine, Touraine, Anjou, Poitou, and Aquitaine. John would have been reduced to the possession of England alone. Philip willingly assented to this, put his own garrisons in Arthur’s best fortresses, and demolished them when he had no hope of maintaining his position in them. John’s nephew, thus betrayed by his ally, turned once more to his uncle; then he came back to the party of France, invaded Poitou, and besieged his grandmother, Eleanor, in Mirebeau. It was nothing new in that family to see the sons armed against their parents. Meanwhile, John came to the rescue, delivered his mother, defeated Arthur, and took him prisoner with most of the great lords of his party. What became of the captive? This has never been clearly ascertained. Matthew Paris[j] alleges that John treated him well at first, but was afterwards alarmed by the threats and the obstinacy of the young Breton. “Arthur disappeared,” he says, “and God grant that it may not have been as malicious rumour reports.” But Arthur had excited too many hopes to allow of the popular imagination resigning itself to this uncertainty. It was confidently affirmed that John had caused him to be put to death, and it was soon added that he had killed him with his own hand. The chaplain of Philip Augustus relates, as if he had seen it with his own eyes, that John took Arthur in a boat, stabbed him twice with a dagger, and threw him into the river three miles from the castle of Rouen. The Bretons placed the scene of the tragedy in their own country near Cherbourg, at the foot of those ill-omened cliffs that present a line of precipices all along the ocean. Thus the tradition went on enlarging in details, and in dramatic interest, and at last Shakespeare makes Arthur a helpless young child, whose gentle and innocent words disarmed the most brutal assassin.[d]

Philip was in the meantime checked in his projects by the court of Rome, which had laid an interdict upon him, on account of his divorce from Ingeborg (Ingeburge) of Denmark. And the preaching of a fifth crusade,[8] which eventually led to the establishment of the Frankish empire of Romania, about the same time took from him the interest and the aid of many nobles and chevaliers. He was, during the same interval, engaged in the conquest of Normandy, which the imbecility and cowardice of John delivered to his arms without defence. Roger de Lascy held the fortress of Les Andelys for several months against the French, and was the only valiant servitor of an unworthy monarch. The barons and warriors of England disdained to fight under his banner. There was as yet none of that rivalry which afterwards sprang up betwixt the nations. The monarchs of both were French princes, speaking the French tongue; and, although subsequent historians have given a national colour to the combats and conquests of Philip, the struggle was almost purely personal. Rouen, the capital of Normandy, surrendered to him (1204), without John’s making a single effort to preserve it. And thus a few years of the reign of one weak prince more than counterbalanced the long-established superiority of the monarchs of England.

[Sidenote: [1204-1208 A.D.]]

It has been seen what use the French monarchs made of their courts of peers, and of the judicial supremacy allowed them, in extending their authority over barons heretofore independent. Philip dared to apply the same principle to the dukes of Normandy, which his father had successfully done with regard to the counts of Bourbon and Auvergne. He summoned John before his suzerain court, to answer for the murder of Arthur and other crimes. Henry II, or Richard, would have given fit answer to such a summons. The Norman princes always held their homage to be that by parade or courtesy, not _homage-liège_. But John had neither the sense of his dignity, nor the spirit to maintain it. He allowed the jurisdiction of Philip’s court, though he feared to obey his summons; and he thus seemed to allow a legal right to the usurpations of Philip. The latter, indeed, appeared to feel the want of dignity in the assessors of his court. All nobles holding their lands directly of the king were peers in his parliament; and thus the petty lords of the counties of Paris and Orleans ranked equally with the dukes of Burgundy or the counts of Flanders. Philip remedied this, by appointing twelve great peers, or rather by pretending that such a number had always existed since the twelve paladins of Charlemagne. Of these, six were clerics, six laics; the latter being the dukes of Normandy, of Aquitaine, of Burgundy, the counts of Toulouse, of Flanders, and of Champagne. This division of the aristocracy in the high and low nobility, was, however, as yet but nominal; the lesser barons still continued to consider themselves as the peers of the greater, and to have an equal voice in the royal courts. It is important for the reader to mark the rise of this feudal institution, and equally so to mark the difference of its fate and progress in France and in England. In the former country, the parliament became amalgamated with lawyers, and preserved to the last its judicial functions, whilst its legislative authority became but a shadow. In England, on the contrary, it guarded the more precious privilege of legislation, abandoning a considerable portion of its judicial rights.

By the discomfiture of John, Philip Augustus united to the monarchy of France not only Normandy, but the provinces of Maine, Anjou, Touraine, and Poitou. Artois he had acquired as the dowry of his wife, Isabella of Hainault. The counties of the south remained still independent of his sway. They looked to the king of Aragon as their suzerain; and there existed far more congeniality of feelings and habits betwixt the Spaniards and Provençals, than betwixt the Provençals and French. Certain events of the reign of Philip, which we are about to relate, destroyed the independence of the people of the south, as well as their connection with the Aragonese, and extended the authority of the French monarch to the Mediterranean and the Pyrenees.

THE ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADE

While Philip Augustus adroitly wrested Normandy and its dependencies from the hands of John, a series of events took place in Languedoc which had the effect of destroying its independence, and of bringing that fine region not only nominally, as it had hitherto been, but really under the dominion of the kings of France.[b]

At this period the southern part of France held but distant relations with the north. Two powerful houses, that of Barcelona and that of Toulouse, shared dominion over it, with the exception of Aquitaine, which extended to the Pyrenees. This isolation naturally gave the south a separate existence, character, and interest. The tongue, that of the Limousin or of Provence, resembling more the Aragonese than the French of Paris, had become, thanks to the troubadours, a literary language. The cities contained a large bourgeois element, which had become wealthy through commerce.

It was in the midst of this people, active, ardent, isolated from most of their neighbours by political as well as natural barriers, corrupted moreover by the refinements of an equivocal civilisation and by the enervating literature of the troubadours, that there broke forth, at the end of the twelfth century, the Albigensian heresy, a powerful one, that having long undermined the ground, ended by being a menace to Catholic beliefs, the church, and society itself.

Several heretical sects dating from the early Christian time had not ceased to have their obscure upholders in France. Such were the Manichæans or Paulicians who believed in the co-existence of a principle of good and a principle of evil. It was the Paulicians who were condemned to be burned at Orleans by King Robert (1022). During the time of the crusaders, the sect, revived by frequent intercourse with the Orient where it had originated, spread all over the centre of France. It is thought that this extension was the work of the emigrants who arrived from Bulgaria; at last the heretics received the name of Bulgarians or Boulgres, and it was rumoured that they had a mysterious chief, or, as they said, a resident pope in that country. They were called Albigenses because they were especially numerous in the vicinity of Albi, and by this last name they have been preserved in history.

Some of their doctrines are known: they regarded the devil, or principle of evil, as the first author of the creation; they rejected the sacraments; they interpreted the Scriptures in a different way from the Catholic tradition. Also they possessed a kind of sacerdotal college whose members, called “the perfect ones,” performed special rites. It is very difficult to form any idea of their dogmas as a whole, for they had no theologian, no teacher, and they have left no writings. One can judge the basis of this heresy, and the sects belonging to it, only indirectly by the writings of the authors and teachers who fought them. These writers have attacked above all the strangeness of their practices and the vulgarity of their superstitions.

[Sidenote: [1208-1209 A.D.]]

But the dominant character of all these sects was their hatred of the church. They pretended to re-establish the primitive simplicity of the religion, which the church had corrupted, and among themselves they were known as _cathares_, or “the pure ones.”[e]

For a long time the holy see seemed not alive to the importance of this sect. It was Pope Innocent III who first perceived its dangerous tendency, and who took certain steps for its destruction. He issued interdicts against such princes as should favour them, and offered the spoil of the heretic to whoever should subdue and slay him. The principal lord of the south of France was at that time Raymond VI, count of Toulouse; and he at least tolerated the Albigenses, as those primitive reformers were called, aware of their moral purity and sincere devotion. Peter of Castelnau, the pope’s legate, reproached the count of Toulouse with his want of zeal, and was indignant at his forbearance to extirpate the new opinions by fire and sword. The legate used no measured language; he not only excommunicated Raymond, but insulted him in his court, and then took his departure. The count of Toulouse expressed his indignant feelings before his followers as Henry II did after the insolence of Thomas à Becket, and with the same fatal effect. On the day after, Peter of Castelnau fell under the dagger of a gentleman of the count, in a hostelry on the Rhone, where he had stopped.

Pope Innocent was driven to transports of rage on learning the assassination of his legate. He not only excommunicated the count of Toulouse, but promulgated a crusade against him. He called on all the nobles of France, on its princes, and its prelates, to join in the “holy” war, to assume the cross, as being engaged against infidels. And the same privileges and indulgences were granted to the crusader of this civil war, that previously were bestowed on those who embarked fortune and life in the perilous attempt to rescue the Holy Land from the Saracen. Spoil, wealth, and honour in this world, together with certain salvation in the next, were now offered at too cheap a rate to be refused. Crowds of adventurers flocked to the standard; and a formidable army was assembled at Lyons in the spring of 1209, under the command of the legate commander, Amalric, abbot of Cîteaux. The pope at the same time created a new ecclesiastical militia for the destruction of heresy. The order of St. Dominic, or of the friars inquisitors, was instituted; and these infernal missionaries were let loose in couples upon the hapless Languedoc, like bloodhounds, to scent their prey and then devour it.

[Sidenote: [1209-1217 A.D.]]

Raymond, count of Toulouse, had neither the force nor the courage to oppose so formidable an invasion. He repaired to the crusaders’ army, delivered up his fortresses and cities, and suffered the humiliating penance of a public flogging in the church of St. Giles. The count’s relative and feudatory, Raymond Roger, viscount of Béziers and Carcassonne, regions infected with the heresy of the Albigenses, came also to make submission. The abbot of Cîteaux, who was prudent enough to accept that of the count of Toulouse, feared to lose all his prey. He refused to admit the exculpation of the viscount of Béziers, and plainly told him that his only chance was to defend himself to the utmost. The young viscount courageously accepted the advice. He summoned the most faithful of his vassals, abandoned the open country as well as towns of lesser consequence to the enemy, and restricted his efforts to the defence of Béziers and of Carcassonne. He shut himself up in the latter. The fury of the crusaders fell first upon Béziers: they had scarcely sat down before the unfortunate town, when a sally of the garrison was repulsed with such vigour that the besiegers entered the town together with the routed host of the citizens. Word of this unexpected success was instantly brought to the abbot of Cîteaux, and his orders were demanded as to how the innocent were to be distinguished from the guilty. “Slay them all,” exclaimed the legate of the vicar of Christ; “the Lord will know his own.” The entire population was in consequence put to the sword; nor woman nor infant was spared. Upwards of twenty thousand human beings perished in the massacre--the sanguinary first-fruits of modern persecution. Carcassonne was next invested, bravely attacked, and as valiantly defended; the young viscount distinguishing himself in defence of his rights, while Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, was the most prominent warrior of the crusaders. At length the legate grew weary of the viscount’s obstinacy, and offered him terms. He gave him a safe-conduct, sanctioned by his own oath and that of the barons of his army. Raymond Roger came with three hundred of his followers to the tent of the legate. “Faith,” said the latter, “is not to be kept with those who have no faith”; and he ordered the viscount and his friends to be put in chains. The inhabitants of Carcassonne found means to fly. In a general assembly of the crusaders, the lordships of Béziers and Carcassonne were given to Simon de Montfort, in reward of his zeal and valour; and to make the gift sure, it was accompanied with the person of his rival. The unfortunate viscount, the victim of the legate’s perfidy, soon after perished in prison.

The victory of the crusaders was of course followed by executions at the stake and on the scaffold. The friars inquisitors of the order of St. Dominic did not relax their zeal. A general revolt against De Montfort was the consequence, in which the people of Toulouse joined. The Provençal army was headed by Pedro king of Aragon, the uncle of the late viscount of Béziers. It was he who had persuaded the unfortunate viscount to trust himself to the legate, and to him in consequence fell the duty of taking vengeance. The cross, however--the profaned cross--was still successful. The Provençals were routed by Simon de Montfort at the battle of Muret, and the king of Aragon was slain. This victory seemed to establish the power of De Montfort in Languedoc. He took possession of all the provinces of his rival, even of the town of Toulouse; and an assembly of prelates sanctioned the usurpation. But the cruel spirit of De Montfort would not allow him to rest quiet in his new empire. Violence and persecution marked his rule; he sought to destroy the Provençal population by the sword or the stake, nor could he bring himself to tolerate the liberties of the citizens of Toulouse. In 1217 the Toulousans again revolted, and war once more broke out betwixt Count Raymond and Simon de Montfort. The latter formed the siege of the capital, and was engaged in repelling a sally, when a stone from one of the walls struck him and put an end to his existence. The death of De Montfort was of course considered a martyrdom by the clergy, and his fame in their chronicles far outshines that of Godfrey de Bouillon or of Richard the Lion-hearted.

LEAGUE AGAINST PHILIP AUGUSTUS

King Philip was in the meantime pursuing his darling object, the humbling the power of the princes of England. He had already driven John from the west of France. That monarch, at variance with his barons, and at the same time excommunicated by the church, seemed an easy prey to Philip. The French king meditated the conquest of England. He leagued with the malcontents of that country, and formed a powerful army for the purposes of invasion. John, to ward off the blow, not only became reconciled to the Roman see, but made himself and his kingdom feudatory to the pope. A papal legate immediately took John under his protection; and the French monarch, rather than risk a quarrel with the church, turned his armies towards Flanders, which he wasted and plundered impitiably, from hatred to its count.

The emperor Otto, then in alliance with King John against France, came to the relief of the Flemings; and thus, for the first time since the accession of the new dynasty, the armies of France and Germany found themselves arrayed against each other in national hostility, each commanded by its respective monarch. The rival hosts met at Bouvines, in the month of August, 1214. Twenty thousand combatants on either side, together with the presence of two monarchs, gave gravity and importance to the meeting.[b]

_The Battle of Bouvines (1214 A.D.)_

[Sidenote: [1214 A.D.]]

The two armies remained for a time a short distance apart, not daring to begin operations; and the French were retreating over the bridge of Bouvines to march upon Hainault, when the enemy, attacking the rearguard, obliged them to turn about.

The chaplain, William le Breton,[k] who during the action remained beside the king singing psalms, says: “Philip was resting under a tree near a chapel, his armour laid aside. At the first sound of combat he entered the church for a short prayer, armed hastily, and mounted his steed with as great enthusiasm as though on his way to a wedding or a feast. Loud shouts resounded from the field: ‘To arms, men of war, to arms!’ together with the blare of trumpets. The king rode to the front, not waiting for his banner--the oriflamme of St. Denis, a flag of scarlet silk, that day carried by Gallon de Montigny, a brave man. The bishop-elect of Senlis, Guérin, ordered the battle so that the French had the sun behind them, while the enemy fought with the sun in their eyes. Three hundred mounted peasants of Soissons, vassals of the abbot of St. Médard, opened action on the right wing, boldly charging the Flemish cavalry. The latter hesitated to engage with their inferiors, but the cry, ‘Death to the French!’ raised by one among them proved decisive; and the Burgundians, led by their duke, arriving to reinforce those of Soissons, there was a furious combat. On this side Count Ferrand of Flanders fought.”

When the battle began the militia had already crossed the bridge; they recrossed in haste, rallied under the royal standard, and took position in the centre in front of the king and his guard. The German cavalry, among whom rode the emperor Otto, charged and penetrated their ranks, and had almost reached the king when they were checked by the prompt action of his officers. In the midst of this encounter arrived the German infantry. These dragged Philip from his horse, and before he could recover his feet attempted to thrust at him through the visor of his helmet or a flaw in his armour. Montigny, who carried the colours, waved his banner frantically for assistance; some horse- and foot-soldiers hastened up. These rescued the king, set him on his horse, and he again plunged into the mêlée.

Otto in his turn was near to being captured. William des Barres, the bravest and ablest of the French cavaliers, the fortunate adversary of Richard the Lion-hearted, whom he had twice overcome, had the emperor by the helmet, and was thrusting at him furiously when overwhelmed by a torrent of the enemy. Unable to make him loose his hold or to close with him, they killed his horse under him; but disentangling himself he succeeded, alone and on foot, in clearing with his sword and his poniard an ample space around him. Otto escaped.

On the right Ferrand, count of Flanders, had fallen wounded into the hands of the French; in the centre the emperor and his German princes had taken to flight: but on the left Renaud de Boulogne and the English held firm. They had overcome the men of Dreux, of Perche, of Ponthieu, and of Vimeu. “Whereupon,” says the poet-chronicler, “Philip de Dreux, bishop of Beauvais, happening to have in his hand a club, and forgetting in his rage and grief the dignity of his office, struck down the English commander and with him many others, spilling no blood but breaking many bones. He enjoined upon those about him the necessity of taking upon themselves the credit of this deed, that he might not fall under reproach for violating the traditions of his office.”

The English were soon completely routed with the exception of Renaud de Boulogne, who had drawn up a double circle of infantry bristling with spears. He charged therefrom as from a fort, and there returned for refuge and to recover breath. At last his horse was wounded; he fell and was captured. Five other counts and twenty-five knights-banneret had been taken.

The return of the king to Paris was a march of triumph. All along the route the churches dispersed indulgences, and the hymns of the choirs mingled with the clash of war implements. The houses were hung with draperies; the roads strewn with branches and fresh flowers. Men and women, children and old people ran to the crossroads to see the count of Flanders who, wounded and in chains, was carried in a litter; some among them crying: “Ferrand, bound and in irons (_ferré_), no longer shalt thou kick against the pricks and hurl defiance at thy masters.”

At Paris the townspeople, with a multitude of clerks and students, burst into songs and hymns on the arrival of the king. The day not sufficing for the jubilation, they festooned the dark with innumerable lanterns, so that the night was brilliant as the day. The students kept holiday for a week. In the midst of these rejoicings the troops, which had comported themselves so creditably in the strife, delivered to the provost of Paris the prisoners in their charge. The king left them a certain number to be ransomed and imprisoned the rest. Ferrand was lodged in the new tower of the Louvre, where he remained for thirteen years. Near Senlis was built Victory Abbey, whose ruins are still to be seen.[c]

LAST YEARS AND INFLUENCE OF PHILIP AUGUSTUS

[Sidenote: [1214-1224 A.D.]]

The brilliant success of Bouvines seems to have contented and allayed the hitherto restless ambition of Philip. In a year or two after, the barons of England, discontented with John, offered their crown to Louis, the son of Philip Augustus. The old monarch hesitated; he dreaded the anathema with which the pope threatened him, if he attacked his vassal, John of England. Prince Louis was obliged to undertake the expedition with but scanty aid from his parent. He was at first successful. Almost all England owned his sovereignty. The castle of Dover alone held out. But the death of John, and the proclaiming of his son, Henry III, soon obliged the French prince to abandon his claim and his conquests in England.

In the south, Philip Augustus showed himself equally dead to enterprise and lost in spirit. Amaury de Montfort, son of Simon, offered to cede to the king all his rights in Languedoc, which he was unable to defend against the old house of Toulouse. Philip hesitated to accept the important cession, and left the rival houses to the continuance of a struggle carried feebly on by either side. He at length expired, in 1223, after a reign of forty-three years. This period of half a century was one of uninterrupted progress to the French monarchy, and to its sovereign power. Though much of this was due to the age, to circumstances, and to the natural development of the country’s political system, still much remains due to the personal character of Philip--to his activity, his prudence, foresight, and courage. The mere list of the provinces which he subdued and united to the monarchy forms the fittest monument to his fame. These were Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Touraine, and Poitou, wrested from John; Picardy and Auvergne, won in the commencement of his reign; Artois, acquired by his marriage with Isabella of Hainault; and, finally, the influence over Languedoc which the crusaders brought him, and which nothing but Philip’s age and declining strength prevented him from converting into sovereignty. In minor matters the active spirit of Philip Augustus equally displayed itself. He put the police on an efficient footing; he walled and paved Paris and the principal towns under his sway; he built and fortified; he encouraged literature by the foundation of professorships; improved the discipline of the army; and, with all his enterprises and expenses, so ordered his finances as to leave a considerable treasure at his death.

LOUIS VIII (1223-1226 A.D.)

When Louis VIII succeeded his father Philip on the throne, it was remarked with joy by the lovers of legitimacy that he was descended by his mother, Isabella of Hainault, from Charles of Lorraine, the last prince of Charlemagne’s blood, and that he thus united the rights of Carlovingian and Capetian. He was feeble in person, and is said not to have been endowed with much capacity; but the sage policy of Philip Augustus, together with the impulse he had given to affairs, continued to direct them, and to render France triumphant over her enemies. Henry III lost the towns of Niort and La Rochelle, and was driven by Louis from Poitou; yet so little did the English feel the loss of this province, that it is scarcely noticed by the historians of the island. The barons were so much occupied with jealousy of their sovereign and of his power, that Henry could procure or send no aid to his French provinces. A feeble expedition was at length fitted out, which preserved Gascony to England, but recovered nothing.

A singular cause of contention arose about this time in Flanders. Baldwin, its last count, had been one of the leaders of the Fifth Crusade, which, in the commencement of the century, took Constantinople from the Greeks. He had been elected emperor of Romania, and had been the first of the Latin dynasty which reigned over it. Soon after, in the year 1205, he had been taken prisoner by the Bulgarians, and had not since been heard of. His daughter Joan succeeded to the county of Flanders, and had married Ferdinand (Ferrand), prince of Portugal, who had opposed Philip Augustus, and who was taken prisoner by that monarch at the battle of Bouvines. Joan took no steps to liberate her husband, or to pay his ransom, when an aged man appeared in Flanders, calling himself Count Baldwin, and giving an account of his long captivity and recent escape from the Bulgarians. Joan denied the identity of this person with her father; Louis VIII was of her opinion; while Henry III treated and allied himself with him as the veritable Baldwin. The self-entitled count appeared before King Louis at Péronne, offering proofs of his identity; but unfortunately he could not recall the place where he had done homage to Philip Augustus, nor the place where he had been knighted, nor yet the place and day of his marriage. Whether he really could not make answer to these questions, or whether age had troubled his memory, the old man was condemned as a pretender, and the countess Joan soon after caused him to be hanged. The common people still persisted in giving credit to his identity with Count Baldwin, and looked on Joan as the murderer of her father. Henry III in no way supported this his unfortunate ally.

(From an old French print)]

[Sidenote: [1204-1226 A.D.]]

The sovereignty over Languedoc was still undecided. King Louis was anxious to undertake a crusade in that country, with all the indulgences and advantages of a warlike pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The hostilities with England and the fickleness of the pope delayed the execution of this purpose. Both obstacles were removed at length. Amaury de Montfort being driven from the conquests of his father by the sons of Count Raymond, reanimated the zeal of the pope and the old crusaders. Amaury retired to Paris, and made cession of his claims to King Louis, who, in return, promised him the office of constable. A new crusade was preached against the Albigenses; and Louis marched towards Languedoc at the head of a formidable army in the spring of the year 1226. The town of Avignon had proffered to the crusaders the facilities of crossing the Rhone under her walls, but refused entry within them to such an host. Louis, having arrived at Avignon, insisted on passing through the town: the Avignonais shut their gates and defied the monarch, who instantly formed the siege. One of the rich municipalities of the south was almost a match for the king of France. He was kept three months under its walls, his army a prey to famine, to disease, and to the assaults of a brave garrison. The crusaders lost twenty thousand men. The people of Avignon at length submitted, but on no dishonourable terms. This was the only resistance that Louis experienced in Languedoc. Raymond VII dared not meet the crusaders in the field, nor durst one of his towns or châteaux remain faithful to him. All submitted. Louis retired from his facile conquest; he himself, and the chiefs of his army, stricken by an epidemy which had prevailed in the conquered regions. The monarch’s feeble frame could not resist it: he expired at Montpensier in Auvergne, in November, 1226.[b]

LOUIS IX, CALLED ST. LOUIS (1226-1270 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1226-1236 A.D.]]

Now we come to the true hero of the Middle Ages, a prince pious as he was brave; who was devoted to feudalism and yet struck it the most telling blows; who venerated the church yet knew how to resist its head; who respected law yet placed justice above it; a frank and gentle soul and loving heart filled with Christian charity, yet one that condemned to torture the body of the sinner for the salvation of his soul; who on earth looked only towards heaven and made of his kingly office a magistracy of order and equity. Rome has canonised him, and the people still see him seated under the oak of Vincennes dispensing justice to all comers. This saint, this man of peace, did more in the simplicity of his heart for the advancement of royalty than the most subtle counsellors or ten fighting monarchs, because the king, in after time, appeared to the people as the incarnation of Justice.[9]

For more than a century the sword of royalty, so far as it pertained to France, had been valiantly carried. But the son of Louis VIII was a child of eleven years. A coalition of the most powerful vassals was formed at once to profit by his minority. The regent, his mother, Blanche of Castile, won to her side one of the confederates, Thibaut, the powerful count of Champagne, sent the royal army to save him from the attack of his former allies and obtained from him, when he inherited the kingdom of Navarre, the important counties of Blois, Chartres, and Sancerre. A treaty, signed in 1229, assured to one of the king’s brothers the succession of the county of Toulouse and a marriage arranged between a second brother of St. Louis and the heiress of Provence prepared the way, at a future date, for the union of that country with France. Already the royal seneschals were established at Beaucaire and Carcassonne, by which the king found himself master, through himself or his brothers, of a large part of southern France. The king’s majority was proclaimed in 1236, but the wise regent still held the greatest influence over her son and the direction of affairs.

The great pontificate of Innocent III had given new energy to the church and to religious sentiment. The spirit of the Crusades which had been extinguished during the rivalry of Philip Augustus with Richard Cœur de Lion and John Lackland was rekindled. In 1235 preaching the “holy war” was recommenced in France, and, as on too many other occasions, the movement was begun by the massacre of those whose ancestors had nailed the sainted victim to the cross of Golgotha. Everywhere the Jews were slaughtered, until the Council of Tours was obliged to take these unhappy people under their protection. Heretics found even less mercy. Thibaut of Champagne burned 183 of them on Mount Aimé near Vertus. This crusade, in which Thibaut himself, the dukes of Burgundy and Brittany took part, was not successful. The crusaders were beaten at Gaza in Palestine, and those who returned brought back with them nothing but the honour of having broken a few lances in the Holy Land.

[Sidenote: [1236-1259 A.D.]]

Up to his war with England St. Louis gave little sign of activity; but in 1241 the emperor Frederick II detained the French prelates who had gone to Rome to attend a council, and Louis demanded with great firmness that they be set at liberty.

“Since the prelates of our realm have for no reason deserved their detention,” he writes the emperor, “may it please your grace to set them at liberty. You will thus appease us, for we regard their detention as an insult, and our royal majesty would lose respect if we could keep quiet under such circumstances. May your imperial prudence not go so far as to allege your power or your will, since the kingdom of France is not so weak that it will resign itself to be trampled under your feet.” The emperor released his prisoners. Some time before Louis, on behalf of himself and one of his brothers, refused the imperial crown of Frederick II which the pope had offered him, and he had also refused the pontiff’s request to modify a royal ordinance of 1234 restraining the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical tribunals--a necessary measure, since these courts had come to judge many more civil cases than the lay tribunals.

This man who spoke so firmly acted in the same manner when forced to take up arms. Attacked in 1242 by the English, who sustained several of his rebellious barons, St. Louis beat them at Taillebourg and at Saintes. Perhaps he would have been able to drive them out of France, but he refused to push his victory. Acquisitions made in the last half century had tripled the extent of the royal domain, but they seemed to him tainted with violence because they were the gain of two confiscations. Through conscientious scruples he left the king of England, in a treaty which he did not sign until his return from the crusade in 1259 [The Treaty of Abbeville], the duchy of Guienne, that is to say Bordeaux, Limoges, Périgueux, Cahors, Agen, Saintonge to the south of the Charente, and Gascony, on condition of homage to the crown. And to prevent perjury he obliged the lords who held fiefs from both crowns to choose between the two sovereigns. The limits of the kingdom were equally uncertain on the south; he fixed them at a convention with the king of Aragon, and the county of Barcelona ceased to be dependent on the French crown.

In 1245, Pope Innocent IV, driven out of Italy by the emperor Frederick II, took refuge at Lyons and there held in the cathedral church of St. John of that city the thirteenth ecumenical council at which 140 bishops assisted. The pope solemnly deposed the emperor and exhorted all Christian princes to march to the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre.

The spirit of the Crusades, which had been extinguished during the rivalry of Philip Augustus and Richard Cœur de Lion, was rekindled. The Spaniards had their crusade against the Moors, the Germans against the Slavs, and the knights of Italy fought against the cities; but in France, in spite of the great satiety of war from the Albigensian troubles, there remained sufficient martial spirit to undertake new crusades. In 1239 many had gone; we know with what success. Jerusalem, which Frederick II had bought back from the hands of the infidels (1229) had now come again under the power of Khwarismian barbarians (1239).

_First Crusade of St. Louis (1248-1254 A.D.)_

St. Louis had not listened to the appeal of the Fathers of the Council of Lyons to assume the cross, but during an illness which, in 1244, brought him to the edge of the grave, he made a vow to go to the Holy Land. His mother and counsellors struggled in vain against this imprudent resolution. Louis left his power again in the hands of Queen Blanche and embarked at Aigues-Mortes, a little city which at that time was joined to the Mediterranean by a canal across the swamps and salt marshes. The king bought it from the monks of Psalmodi Abbey in order to have a port of his own upon that sea, for Marseilles belonged to his brother the count of Provence. Many crusaders embarked at the latter city, among them the king’s friend the seneschal of Champagne and the sire de Joinville, who, with Villehardouin, is the first in point of date, as in merit, of the old French prose writers. It was not without many misgivings that he determined to follow his master. In setting out to join him he passed near his own castle, “but,” he said, “I dare not turn my face towards Joinville, for fear that my heart would fail me in leaving my two children and my fine castle which are so dear to me.” On the banks of the Rhone he saw the ruins of a castle which the king had had destroyed because its lord had a bad name for stripping and robbing all the merchants and pilgrims who passed by.

[Sidenote: [1249-1270 A.D.]]

St. Louis had been collecting for two years a large store of provisions on the island of Cyprus. The army left there in eighteen hundred ships, large and small, for Egypt. Damietta, at one of the mouths of the Nile, was captured (June 7th, 1249), but precious time was lost before marching upon Cairo. Five months and a half of delay stoutened the hearts of the mamelukes. The crusaders took a month to cover the five leagues which separated them from the town of Mansurah. A badly directed fight at the same place cost the lives of a large number of knights and of St. Louis’ brother the count of Artois. When the prior of the Hospital, says Joinville,[i] came to ask of St. Louis if he had any news of his brother, the king replied that he had, that he knew his brother was in heaven. The prior tried to comfort him in praising the valour the prince had always shown and the glory he had gained that day, and the good king replied that God was adored in all that he had done. And then he began to shed great tears, at which many people who were looking on were oppressed by grief and compassion (February, 1250).

Soon the army was surrounded by enemies and decimated by pest. Joinville was stricken down, and equally so his poor chaplain. One day it happened that he was chanting mass before the seneschal’s bedside; when the priest was at the sacrament Joinville perceived him to be so ill that with his own eyes he saw him faint. The seneschal got up and ran to raise him and then he managed to finish the mass, but never said it again, and died. The retreat was disastrous and finally they had to surrender. “The good, saintly man, the king,” did honour to his captivity by his courage and inspired even his enemies with respect for his virtues. They released him for a large ransom. Once free he made his way to Palestine and stayed there three years, employing his influence and zeal in maintaining harmony among the Christians and his resources in repairing the fortifications of the places they still occupied.

The news of these disasters only served to increase the king’s popularity in France. The people would not see his faults and thought only of the virtues he had shown. The prelates and lords had deserted and betrayed him, they said; it would take the humble people to rescue him, and an immense crowd of serfs and peasants gathered together to cross the sea and go to the king’s help. This was the Shepherds’ Crusade. These people lived, on the way, by pillage--even murders were committed. It was necessary to deal harshly with them, and they were scattered like wild beasts.

The news of the regent’s death (December, 1252) recalled Louis at last to France. In passing Cyprus the king’s galley grazed a rock, which carried away fully eighteen feet of her keel. Louis was advised to change ships, and according to Joinville[i] said, “If I leave the ship, five or six hundred people who are on it and who value their life as I do mine will be afraid to stay behind and will land at Cyprus with no hope or means of ever returning to their own country. I prefer to place myself, my wife, and children in danger under the protection of God, than to bring such misfortune on so many people.”

_Last Years and Death of St. Louis_

It was after his return to France that St. Louis made treaties with England and Aragon to determine definitely the boundaries of the three kingdoms. He hoped in making substantial sacrifices to strengthen his hold on the provinces he kept for himself and to prevent the war so frequently provoked by uncertainty with regard to frontiers. This solicitude to do justice to all caused him to be chosen as arbitrator between the king of England and his barons in the controversy over the provisions of Oxford (1264). Louis pronounced in favour of the king, and this time was not successful, for the barons did not hold to his decision, and deposed Henry III. More fortunate elsewhere, he settled a dispute of succession which delivered Flanders from civil war. In the year 1270 St. Louis undertook another crusade in which his faithful Joinville this time refused to engage.[f]

[Sidenote: [1270 A.D.]]

A pacific expedition which should merely intimidate the king of Tunis and induce him to become a convert was not what suited the Genoese in whose vessels St. Louis was making his passage. Most of the crusaders preferred violence; it was said that Tunis was a rich town, the pillage of which might indemnify them for their dangerous expedition. The Genoese, regardless of the voice of St. Louis, began hostilities by seizing the vessels they found before Carthage. The landing took place without obstacle. The Moors only showed themselves to provoke the Christians, and make them waste their strength in fruitless pursuits. After spending some weary days on the burning shore, the Christians advanced towards the castle of Carthage. All that remained of the great rival of Rome was a fort guarded by two hundred soldiers, and the Saracens who had retreated into the vaults or subterranean chambers were butchered or suffocated by smoke and flames. The king found the ruins full of corpses, which he had removed, that he might take up his quarters there with his followers. He had to wait at Carthage for his brother, Charles of Anjou, before marching on Tunis.

The greater part of the army remained under the African sun, tormented by the thick dust swept from the desert by the winds, and surrounded by the festering remains of the dead. The Moors prowled all around, continually cutting off some stragglers. There were no trees, no vegetable food; for water there was nothing but fetid marshes and cisterns full of disgusting insects. In eight days the plague had broken out. The counts of Vendôme, de la Marche and Viane, Walter de Nemours, marshal of France, the sires de Montmorency, Piennes, Brissac, St. Briçon, and d’Apremont were already dead.

The legate soon followed them. The survivors being no longer able to bury them, they were thrown into the canal, till they covered the whole surface of the water. Meanwhile, the king and his sons were attacked by the malady; the youngest died in his vessel, and it was not till eight days afterwards that the confessor of St. Louis took on himself to acquaint him with the mournful event. The deceased was the most beloved of his children, and his death announced to a dying father was, to the latter, one tie less to earth, a call from God, a temptation to die. Accordingly, without perturbation or regret, he accomplished that last work of a Christian life, making the responses to the litanies and the psalms, dictating a noble and affecting instruction for his son, and receiving even the ambassadors of the Greeks, who came to entreat his intervention in their favour with his brother Charles of Anjou, whose ambition menaced them. He spoke to them with kindness, and promised to exert himself with zeal, if he lived, to keep them in peace; but the next day he himself entered into the peace of God.

That last night of his life he desired them to raise him from his bed and lay him on ashes; and so he died, with his arms constantly folded in the form of a cross. “And on Monday the blessed king stretched his folded hands towards heaven, and said, ‘Good Lord God, have mercy on this people that here remaineth, and lead it into its country, that it fall not into the hand of its enemies, and that it be not constrained to renounce thy holy name!’ In the night before he deceased, whilst he was reposing, he sighed, and said in a low voice, ‘O Jerusalem! O Jerusalem!’”[d]