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insure success, even to the retreat. At four leagues' distance from the
camp it had just left, the rear-guard of the crusaders, harassed by
clouds of Saracens, was obliged to halt. Louis could no longer keep on
his horse. He was put up at a house," says Joinville, "and laid, almost
dead, upon the lap of a tradeswoman from Paris; and it was believed that
he would not last till evening." With his consent, one of his lieges
entered into parley with one of the Mussulman chiefs; a truce was about
to be concluded, and the Mussulman was taking off his ring from his
finger as a pledge that he would observe it. "But during this," says
Joinville, "there took place a great mishap. A traitor of a sergeant,
whose name was Marcel, began calling to our people, 'Sirs knights,
surrender, for such is the king's command: cause not the king's death.'
All thought that it was the king's command; and they gave up their swords
to the Saracens." Being forthwith declared prisoners, the king and all
the rear-guard were removed to Mansourah; the king by boat; and his two
brothers, the Counts of Anjou and Poitiers, and all the other crusaders,
drawn up in a body and shackled, followed on foot on the river bank. The
advance-guard, and all the rest of the army, soon met the same fate.
Ten thousand prisoners--this was all that remained of the crusade that
had started eighteen months before from Aigues-Mortes. Nevertheless the
lofty bearing and the piety of the king still inspired the Mussulmans
with great respect. A negotiation was opened between him and the Sultan
Malek-Moaddam, who, having previously freed him from his chains, had him
treated with a certain magnificence. As the price of a truce and of his
liberty, Louis received a demand for the immediate surrender of Damietta,
a heavy ransom, and the restitution of several places which the
Christians still held in Palestine. "I cannot dispose of those places,"
said Louis, "for they do not belong to me; the princes and the Christian
orders, in whose hands they are, can alone keep or surrender them." The
sultan, in anger, threatened to have the king put to the torture, or sent
to the Grand Khalif of Bagdad, who would detain him in prison for the
rest of his days. "I am your prisoner," said Louis; "you can do with me
what you will." "You call yourself our prisoner," said the Mussulman
negotiators, "and so, we believe you are; but you treat us as if you had
us in prison." The sultan perceived that he had to do with an
indomitable spirit; and he did not insist any longer upon more than the
surrender of Damietta, and on a ransom of five hundred thousand livres
(that is, about ten million one hundred and thirty-two thousand francs,
or four hundred and five thousand two hundred and eighty pounds, of
modern money, according to M. de Wailly, supposing, as is probable, that
livres of Tours are meant). "I will pay willingly five hundred thousand
livres for the deliverance of my people," said Louis, and I will give up
Damietta for the deliverance of my own person, for I am not a man who
ought to be bought and sold for money." "By my faith," said the sultan,
the Frank is liberal not to have haggled about so large a sum. Go tell
him that I will give him one hundred thousand livres to help towards
paying the ransom." The negotiation was concluded on this basis; and
victors and vanquished quitted Mansourah, and arrived, partly by land and
partly by the Nile, within a few leagues of Damietta, the surrender of
which was fixed for the 7th of May. But five days previously a tragic
event took place. Several emirs of the Mamelukes suddenly entered
Louis's tent. They had just slain the Sultan Malek-Moaddam, against whom
they had for some time been conspiring. "Fear nought, sir," said they to
the king; "this was to be. Do what concerns you in respect of the
stipulated conditions, and you shall be free." Of these emirs one, who
had slain the sultan with his own hand, asked the king, brusquely, "What
wilt thou give me? I have slain thine enemy, who would have put thee to
death, had he lived;" and he asked to be made knight. Louis answered not
a word. Some of the crusaders present urged him to satisfy the desire of
the emir, who had in his power the decision of their fate. "I will never
confer knighthood on an infidel," said Louis; "let the emir turn
Christian; I will take him away to France, enrich him, and make him
knight." It is said that, in their admiration for this piety and this
indomitable firmness, the emirs had at one time a notion of taking Louis
himself for sultan in the place of him whom they had just slain; and this
report was probably not altogether devoid of foundation, for, some time
afterwards, in the intimacy of the conversations between them, Louis one
day said to Joinville, "Think you that I would have taken the kingdom of
Babylon, if they had offered it to me?" "Whereupon I told him," adds
Joinville, "that he would have done a mad act, seeing that they had slain
their lord; and he said to me that of a truth he would not have refused."
However that may be, the conditions agreed upon with the late Sultan
Malek-Moaddam were carried out; on the 7th of May, 1250, Geoffrey
de Sargines gave up to the emirs the keys of Damietta; and the Mussulmans
entered in tumultuously. The king was waiting aboard his ship for the
payment which his people were to make for the release of his brother, the
Count of Poitiers; and, when he saw approaching a bark on which he
recognized his brother, "Light up! light up!" he cried instantly to his
sailors; which was the signal agreed upon for setting out. And leaving
forthwith the coast of Egypt, the fleet which bore the remains of the
Christian army made sail for the shores of Palestine.
The king, having arrived at St. Jean d'Acre on the 14th of May, 1250,
accepted without shrinking the trial imposed upon him by his unfortunate
situation. He saw his forces considerably reduced; and the majority of
the crusaders left to him, even his brothers themselves, did not hide
their ardent desire to return to France. He had that virtue, so rare
amongst kings, of taking into consideration the wishes of his comrades,
and of desiring their free assent to the burden he asked them to bear
with him. He assembled the chief of them, and put the question plainly
before them. "The queen, my mother," he said, "biddeth me and prayeth me
to get me hence to France, for that my kingdom hath neither peace nor
truce with the king of England. The folk here tell me that, if I get me
hence, this land is lost, for none of those that be there will dare to
abide in it. I pray you, therefore, to give it thought, for it is a
grave matter, and I grant you nine days for to answer me whatever shall
seem to you good." Eight days after, they returned; and Guy de
Mauvoisin, speaking in their name, said to the king, "Sir, your brothers
and the rich men who be here have had regard unto your condition, and
they see that you cannot remain in this country to your own and your
kingdom's honor, for of all the knights who came in your train, and of
whom you led into Cyprus twenty-eight hundred, there remain not one
hundred in this city. Wherefore they do counsel you, sir, to get you
hence to France, and to provide troops and money wherewith you may return
speedily to this country, to take vengeance on these enemies of God who
have kept you in prison." Louis, without any discussion, interrogated
all present, one after another, and all, even the pope's legate, agreed
with Guy de Mauvoisin. "I was seated just fourteenth, facing the
legate," says Joinville, "and when he asked me how it seemed to me, I
answered him that if the king could hold out so far as to keep the field
for a year, he would do himself great honor if he remained."
[Illustration: Sire de Joinville----55]
Only two knights, William de Beaumont and Sire de Chatenay, had the
courage to support the opinion of Joinville, which was bolder for the
time being, but not less indecisive in respect of the immediate future
than the contrary opinion. "I have heard you out, sirs," said the king:
"and I will answer you, within eight clays from this time, touching that
which it shall please me to do." "Next Sunday," says Joinville, "we came
again, all of us, before the king. 'Sirs,' said he, 'I thank very much
all those who have counselled me to get me gone to France, and likewise
those who have counselled me to bide. But I have bethought me that, if I
bide, I see no danger lest my kingdom of France be lost, for the queen,
my mother, hath a many folk to defend it. I have noted likewise that the
barons of this land do say that, if I go hence, the kingdom of Jerusalem
is lost. At no price will I suffer to be lost the kingdom of Jerusalem,
which I came to guard and conquer. My resolve, then, is, that I bide for
the present. So I say unto you, ye rich men who are here, and to all
other knights who shall have a mind to bide with me, come and speak
boldly unto me, and I will give ye so much that it shall not be my fault
if ye have no mind to bide.'"
Thus none, save Louis himself, dared go to the root of the question. The
most discreet advised him to depart, only for the purpose of coming back,
and recommencing what had been so unsuccessful; and the boldest only
urged him to remain a year longer. None took the risk of saying, even
after so many mighty but vain experiments, that the enterprise was
chimerical, and must be given up. Louis alone was, in word and deed,
perfectly true to his own absorbing idea of recovering the Holy Sepulchre
from the Mussulmans and re-establishing the kingdom of Jerusalem. His
was one of those pure and majestic souls, which are almost alien to the
world in which they live, and in which disinterested passion is so strong
that it puts judgment to silence, extinguishes all fear, and keeps up
hope to infinity. The king's two brothers embarked with a numerous
retinue. How many crusaders, knights, or men-at-arms, remained with
Louis, there is nothing to show; but they were, assuredly, far from
sufficient for the attainment of the twofold end he had in view, and even
for insuring less grand results, such as the deliverance of the crusaders
still remaining prisoners in the hands of the Mussulmans, and anything
like an effectual protection for the Christians settled in Palestine and
Syria.
Twice Louis believed he was on the point of accomplishing his desire.
Towards the end of 1250, and again in 1252, the Sultan of Aleppo and
Damascus, and the Emirs of Egypt, being engaged in a violent struggle,
made offers to him, by turns, of restoring the kingdom of Jerusalem if he
would form an active alliance with one or the other party against its
enemies. Louis sought means of accepting either of these offers without
neglecting his previous engagements, and without compromising the fate of
the Christians still prisoners in Egypt, or living in the territories of
Aleppo and Damascus; but, during the negotiations entered upon with a
view to this end, the Mussulmans of Syria and Egypt suspended their
differences, and made common cause against the remnants of the Christian
crusaders; and all hope of re-entering Jerusalem by these means vanished
away. Another time, the Sultan of Damascus, touched by Louis's pious
perseverance, had word sent to him that he, if he wished, could go on a
pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and should find himself in perfect safety. "The
king," says Joinville, "held a great council; and none urged him to go.
It was shown unto him that if he, who was the greatest king in
Christendom, performed his pilgrimage without delivering the Holy City
from the enemies of God, all the other kings and other pilgrims who came
after him would hold themselves content with doing just as much, and
would trouble themselves no more about the deliverance of Jerusalem." He
was reminded of the example set by Richard Coeur de Lion, who, sixty
years before, had refused to cast even a look upon Jerusalem, when he was
unable to deliver her from her enemies. Louis, just as Richard had,
refused the incomplete satisfaction which had been offered him, and for
nearly four years, spent by him on the coasts of Palestine and Syria
since his departure from Damietta, from 1250 to 1254, he expended, in
small works of piety, sympathy, protection, and care for the future of
the Christian populations in Asia, his time, his strength, his pecuniary
resources, and the ardor of a soul which could not remain icily abandoned
to sorrowing over great desires unsatisfied.
An unexpected event occurred and brought about all at once a change in
his position and his plans. At the commencement of the year 1253, at
Sidon, the ramparts of which he was engaged in repairing, he heard that
his mother, Queen Blanche, had died at Paris on the 27th of November,
1252. "He made so great mourning thereat," says Joinville, "that for two
days no speech could be gotten of him. After that he sent a chamber-man
for to fetch me. When I carne before him, in his chamber where he was
alone, so soon as he got sight of me, he stretched forth his arms, and
said to me, 'O, seneschal, I have lost my mother!'" It was a great loss
both for the son and for the king. Imperious, exacting, jealous, and
often disagreeable in private life and in the bosom of her family,
Blanche was, nevertheless, according to all contemporary authority, even
the least favorable to her, "the most discreet woman of her time, with a
mind singularly quick and penetrating, and with a man's heart to leaven
her Woman's sex and ideas; personally magnanimous, of indomitable energy,
sovereign mistress in all the affairs of her age, guardian and
protectress of France, worthy of comparison with Semiramis, the most
eminent of her sex." From the time of Louis's departure on the crusade
as well as during his minority she had given him constant proofs of a
devotion as intelligent as it was impassioned, as useful as it was
masterful. All letters from France demanded the speedy return of the
king. The Christians of Syria were themselves of the same opinion; the
king, they said, has done for us, here, all he could do; he will serve us
far better by sending us strong re-enforcements from France. Louis
embarked at St. Jean d'Acre, on the 24th of April, 1254, carrying away
with him, on thirteen vessels, large and small, Queen Marguerite, his
children, his personal retinue, and his own more immediate men-at-arms,
and leaving the Christians of Syria, for their protection in his name,
a hundred knights under the orders of Geoffrey de Sargines, that comrade
of his in whose bravery and pious fealty he had the most entire
confidence. After two months and a half at sea, the king and his fleet
arrived, on the 8th of July, 1254, off the port of Hyeres, which at that
time belonged to the Empire, and not to France. For two days Louis
refused to land at this point; for his heart was set upon not putting his
foot upon land again save on the soil of his own kingdom, at Aigues-
Mortes, whence he had, six years before, set out. At last he yielded to
the entreaties of the queen and those who were about him, landed at
Hyeres, passed slowly through France, and made his solemn entry into
Paris on the 7th of September, 1254. "The burgesses and all those who
were in the city were there to meet him, clad and bedecked in all their
best according to their condition. If the other towns had received him
with great joy, Paris evinced even more than any other. For several days
there were bonfires, dances, and other public rejoicings, which ended
sooner than the people wished; for the king, who was pained to see the
expense, the dances, and the vanities indulged in, went off to the wood
of Vincennes to put a stop to them.
So soon as he had resumed the government of his kingdom, after six years'
absence and adventures, heroic, indeed, but all in vain for the cause of
Christendom, those of his counsellors and servants who lived most closely
with him and knew him best were struck at the same time with what he had
remained and what he had become during this long and cruel trial. "When
the king had happily returned to France, how piously he bare himself
towards God, how justly towards his subjects, how compassionately towards
the afflicted, and how humbly in his own respect, and with what zeal he
labored to make progress, according to his power, in every virtue, all
this can be attested by persons who carefully watched his manner of life,
and who knew the spotlessness of his conscience. It is the opinion of
the most clear-sighted and the wisest that, in proportion as gold is more
precious than silver, so the manner of living and acting which the king
brought back from his pilgrimage in the Holy Land was holy and new, and
superior to his former behavior, albeit, even in his youth, he had ever
been good and guileless, and worthy of high esteem." These are the words
written about St. Louis by his confessor Geoffrey de Beaulieu, a
chronicler, curt and simple even to dryness, but at the same time well
informed. An attempt will be made presently to give a fair idea of the
character of St. Louis's government during the last fifteen years of his
reign, and of the place he fills in the history of the kingship and of
politics in France; but just now it is only with the part he played in
the crusades and with what became of them in his hands that we have to
occupy our attention. For seven years after his return to France, from
1254 to 1261, Louis seemed to think no more about them, and there is
nothing to show that he spoke of them even to his most intimate
confidants; but, in spite of his apparent calmness, he was living, so far
as they were concerned, in a continual ferment of imagination and
internal fever, ever flattering himself that some favorable circumstance
would call him back to his interrupted work. And he had reason to
believe that circumstances were responsive to his wishes. The Christians
of Palestine and Syria were a prey to perils and evils which became more
pressing every day; the cross was being humbled at one time before the
Tartars of Tchingis-Khan, at another before the Mussulmans of Egypt; Pope
Urban was calling upon the King of France; and Geoffrey de Sargines, the
heroic representative whom Louis had left in St. Jean d'Acre, at the
head of a small garrison, was writing to him that ruin was imminent, and
speedy succor indispensable to prevent it. In 1261, Louis held, at
Paris, a parliament, at which, without any talk of a new crusade,
measures were taken which revealed an idea of it: there were decrees for
fasts and prayers on behalf of the Christians of the East and for
frequent and earnest military drill. In 1263, the crusade was openly
preached; taxes were levied, even on the clergy, for the purpose of
contributing towards it; and princes and barons bound themselves to take
part in it. Louis was all approval and encouragement, without declaring
his own intention. In 1267, a parliament was convoked at Paris. The
king, at first, conversed discreetly with some of his barons about the
new plan of crusade; and then, suddenly, having had the precious relics
deposited in the Holy Chapel set before the eyes of the assembly, he
opened the session by ardently exhorting those present "to avenge the
insult which had so long been offered to the Saviour in the Holy Land and
to recover the Christian heritage possessed, for our sins, by the
infidels." Next year, on the 9th of February, 1268, at a new parliament
assembled at Paris, the king took an oath to start in the month of May,
1270.
Great was the surprise, and the disquietude was even greater than the
surprise. The kingdom was enjoying abroad a peace and at home a
tranquillity and prosperity for a long time past without example; feudal
quarrels were becoming more rare and terminating more quickly; and the
king possessed the confidence and the respect of the whole population.
Why compromise such advantages by such an enterprise, so distant, so
costly, and so doubtful of success? Whether from good sense or from
displeasure at the burdens imposed upon them, many ecclesiastics showed
symptoms of opposition, and Pope Clement IV. gave the king nothing but
ambiguous and very reserved counsel. When he learned that Louis was
taking with him on the crusade three of his sons, aged respectively
twenty-two, eighteen, and seventeen, he could not refrain from writing to
the Cardinal of St. Cecile, "It doth not strike us as an act of well-
balanced judgment to impose the taking of the cross upon so many of the
king's sons, and especially the eldest; and, albeit we have heard reasons
to the contrary, either we be much mistaken or they are utterly devoid of
reason." Even the king's personal condition was matter for grave
anxiety. His health was very much enfeebled; and several of his most
intimate and most far-seeing advisers were openly opposed to his design.
He vehemently urged Joinville to take the cross again with him; but
Joinville refused downright. "I thought," said he, "that they all
committed a mortal sin to advise him the voyage, because the whole
kingdom was in fair peace at home and with all neighbors, and, so soon as
he departed, the state of the kingdom did nought but worsen. They also
committed a great sin to advise him the voyage in the great state of
weakness in which his body was, for he could not bear to go by chariot or
to ride; he was so weak that he suffered me to carry him in my arms from
the hotel of the Count of Auxerre, the place where I took leave of him,
to the Cordeliers. And nevertheless, weak as he was, had he remained in
France, he might have lived yet a while and wrought much good."
All objections, all warnings, all anxieties came to nothing in the face
of Louis's fixed idea and pious passion. He started from Paris on the
16th of March, 1270, a sick man almost already, but with soul content,
and probably the only one without misgiving in the midst of all his
comrades. It was once more at Aigues-Mortes that he went to embark. All
was as yet dark and undecided as to the plan of the expedition. Was
Egypt, or Palestine, or Constantinople, or Tunis, to be the first point
of attack? Negotiations, touching this subject, had been opened with the
Venetians and the Genoese without arriving at any conclusion or
certainty. Steps were taken at haphazard with full trust in Providence
and utter forgetfulness that Providence does not absolve men from
foresight. On arriving at Aigues-Mortes about the middle of May, Louis
found nothing organized, nothing in readiness, neither crusaders nor
vessels; everything was done slowly, incompletely, and with the greatest
irregularity. At last, on the 2d of July, 1270, he set sail without any
one's knowing and without the king's telling any one whither they were
going. It was only in Sardinia, after four days' halt at Cagliari, that
Louis announced to the chiefs of the crusade, assembled aboard his ship
the Mountjoy, that he was making for Tunis, and that their Christian work
would commence there. The King of Tunis (as he was then called),
Mohammed Mostanser, had for some time been talking of his desire to
become a Christian, if he could be efficiently protected against the
seditions of his subjects. Louis welcomed with transport the prospect of
Mussulman conversions. "Ah!" he cried, "if I could only see myself the
gossip and sponsor of so great a godson!"
But on the 17th of July, when the fleet arrived before Tunis, the
admiral, Florent de Varennes, probably without the king's orders and with
that want of reflection which was conspicuous at each step of the
enterprise, immediately took possession of the harbor and of some
Tunisian vessels as prize, and sent word to the king "that he had only to
support him and that the disembarkation of the troops might be effected
in perfect safety." Thus war was commenced at the very first moment
against the Mussulman prince whom there had been a promise of seeing
before long a Christian.
At the end of a fortnight, after some fights between the Tunisians and
the crusaders, so much political and military blindness produced its
natural consequences. The re-enforcements promised to Louis, by his
brother Charles of Anjou, king of Sicily, had not arrived; provisions
were falling short; and the heats of an African summer were working havoc
amongst the army with such rapidity that before long there was no time to
bury the dead, but they were cast pell-mell into the ditch which
surrounded the camp, and the air was tainted thereby. On the 3d of
August Louis was attacked by the epidemic fever, and obliged to keep his
bed in his tent. He asked news of his son John Tristan, Count of Nevers,
who had fallen ill before him, and whose recent death, aboard the vessel
to which he had been removed in hopes that the sea air might be
beneficial, had been carefully concealed from him. The count, as well as
the Princess Isabel, married to Theobald the Young, King of Navarre, was
a favorite child of Louis, who, on hearing of his loss, folded his hands
and sought in silence and prayer some assuagement of his grief. His
malady grew worse; and having sent for his successor, Prince Philip
(Philip the Bold), he took from his hour-book some instructions which he
had written out for him, with his own hand and in French, and delivered
them to him, bidding him to observe them scrupulously. He gave likewise
to his daughter Isabel, who was weeping at the foot of his bed, and to
his son-in-law the King of Navarre, some writings which had been intended
for them, and he further charged Isabel to deliver another to her
youngest sister, Agnes, affianced to the Duke of Burgundy. "Dearest
daughter," said he, "think well hereon: full many folk have fallen asleep
with wild thoughts of sin, and in the morning their place hath not known
them." Just after he had finished satisfying his paternal solicitude, it
was announced to him, on the 24th of August, that envoys from the Emperor
Michael Palaeologus had landed at Cape Carthage, with orders to demand
his intervention with his brother Charles, King of Sicily, to deter him
from making war on the but lately re-established Greek empire. Louis
summoned all his strength to receive them in his tent, in the presence of
certain of his counsellors, who were uneasy at the fatigue he was
imposing upon himself. "I promise you, if I live," said he to the
envoys, "to cooperate, so far as I may be able, in what your master
demands of me; meanwhile, I exhort you to have patience, and be of good
courage." This was his last political act, and his last concern with the
affairs of the world; henceforth he was occupied only with pious
effusions which had a bearing at one time on his hopes for his soul, at
another on those Christian interests which had been so dear to him all
his life. He kept repeating his customary orisons in a low voice, and he
was heard murmuring these broken words: "Fair Sir God, have mercy on this
people that bideth here, and bring them back to their own land! Let them
not fall into the hands of their enemies, and let them not be constrained
to deny Thy name!" And at the same time that he thus expressed his sad
reflections upon the situation in which he was leaving his army and his
people, he cried from time to time, as he raised himself on his bed,
"Jerusalem! Jerusalem! We will go up to Jerusalem!" During the night of
the 24th 25th of August he ceased to speak, all the time continuing to
show that he was in full possession of his senses; he insisted upon
receiving extreme unction out of bed, and lying upon a coarse sack-cloth
covered with cinders, with the cross before him; and on Monday, the 25th
of August, 1270, at three P.M., he departed in peace, whilst uttering
these his last words: "Father, after the example of the Divine Master,
into Thy hands I commend my spirit!"
[Illustration: The Death of St. Louis----64]
CHAPTER XVIII.----THE KINGSHIP IN FRANCE.
That the kingship occupied an important place and played an important
part in the history of France is an evident and universally recognized
fact. But to what causes this fact was due, and what particular
characteristics gave the kingship in France that preponderating influence
which, in weal and in woe, it exercised over the fortunes of the country,
is a question which has been less closely examined, and which still
remains vague and obscure. This question it is which we would now shed
light upon and determine with some approach to precision. We cannot
properly comprehend and justly appreciate a great historical force until
we have seen it issuing from its primary source and followed it in its
various developments.
At the first glance, two facts strike us in the history of the kingship
in France. It was in France that it adopted soonest and most
persistently maintained its fundamental principle, heredity. In the
other monarchical states of Europe--in England, in Germany, in Spain, and
in Italy--divers principles, at one time election, and at another right
of conquest, have been mingled with or substituted for the heredity of
the throne; different dynasties have reigned; and England has had her
Saxon, Danish, and Norman kings, her Plantagenets, her Tudors, her
Stuarts, her Nassaus, her Brunswicks. In Germany, and up to the
eighteenth century, the Empire, the sole central dignity, was elective
and transferable. Spain was for a long while parcelled out into several
distinct kingdoms, and since she attained territorial unity the houses of
Austria and Bourbon have both occupied her throne. The monarchy and the
republic for many a year disputed and divided Italy. Only in France was
there, at any time during eight centuries, but a single king and a single
line of kings. Unity and heredity, those two essential principles of
monarchy, have been the invariable characteristics of the kingship in
France.
A second fact, less apparent and less remarkable, but, nevertheless, not
without importance or without effect upon the history of the kingship in
France, is the extreme variety of character, of faculties, of
intellectual and moral bent, of policy and personal conduct amongst the
French kings. In the long roll of thirty-three kings who reigned in
France from Hugh Capet to Louis XVI. there were kings wise and kings
foolish, kings able and kings incapable, kings rash and kings slothful,
kings earnest and kings frivolous, kings saintly and kings licentious,
kings good and sympathetic towards their people, kings egotistical and
concerned solely about themselves, kings lovable and beloved, kings
sombre and dreaded or detested. As we go forward and encounter them on
our way, all these kingly characters will be seen appearing and acting in
all their diversity and all their incoherence. Absolute monarchical
power in France was, almost in every successive reign, singularly
modified, being at one time aggravated and at another alleviated
according to the ideas, sentiments, morals, and spontaneous instincts of
the monarchs. Nowhere else, throughout the great European monarchies,
has the difference between kingly personages exercised so much influence
on government and national condition. In that country the free action of
individuals has filled a prominent place and taken a prominent part in
the course of events.
It has been shown how insignificant and inert, as sovereigns, were the
first three successors of Hugh Capet. The goodness to his people
displayed by King Robert was the only kingly trait which, during that
period, deserved to leave a trace in history. The kingship appeared once
more with the attributes of energy and efficiency on the accession of
Louis VI., son of Philip I. He was brought up in the monastery of St.
Denis, which at that time had for its superior a man of judgment, the
Abbot Adam; and he then gave evidence of tendencies and received his
training under influences worthy of the position which awaited him. He
was handsome, tall, strong, and alert, determined and yet affable. He
had more taste for military exercises than for the amusements of
childhood and the pleasures of youth. He was at that time called Louis
the Wide-awake. He had the good fortune to find in the Monastery of St.
Denis a fellow-student capable of becoming a king's counsellor. Suger, a
child born at St. Denis, of obscure parentage, and three or four years
younger than Prince Louis, had been brought up for charity's sake in the
abbey, and the Abbot Adam, who had perceived his natural abilities, had
taken pains to develop them. A bond of esteem and mutual friendship was
formed between the two young people, both of whom were disposed to
earnest thought and earnest living; and when, in 1108, Louis the Wide-
awake ascended the throne, the monk Suger became his adviser whilst
remaining his friend.
A very small kingdom was at that time the domain belonging properly and
directly to the King of France. Ile-de-France, properly so called, and a
part of Orleanness (_l'Oreanais_), pretty nearly the five departments of
the Seine, Seine-et-Oise, Seineet-Marne, Oise and Loiret, besides,
through recent acquisitions, French Vexin (which bordered on the Ile-de-
France and had for its chief place Pontoise, being separated by the
little River Epte from Norman Vexin, of which Rouen was the capital),
half the countship of Sens and the countship of Bourges--such was the
whole of its extent. But this limited state was as liable to agitation,
and often as troublous and as toilsome to govern, as the very greatest of
modern states. It was full of Petty lords, almost sovereigns in their
own estates, and sufficiently strong to struggle against their kingly
suzerain, who had, besides, all around his domains, several neighbors
more powerful than himself in the extent and population of their states.
But lord and peasant, layman and ecclesiastic, castle and country and the
churches of France, were not long discovering that, if the kingdom was
small, it had verily a king. Louis did not direct to a distance from
home his ambition and his efforts; it was within his own dominion, to
check the violence of the strong against the weak, to put a stop to the
quarrels of the strong amongst themselves, to make an end, in France at
least, of unrighteousness and devastation, and to establish there some
sort of order and some sort of justice, that he displayed his energy and
his perseverance. "He was animated," says Suger, "by a strong sense of
equity; to air his courage was his delight; he scorned inaction; he
opened his eyes to see the way of discretion; he broke his rest and was
unwearied in his solicitude." Suger has recounted in detail sixteen of
the numerous expeditions which Louis undertook into the interior, to
accomplish his work of repression or of exemplary chastisement.
Bouchard, Lord of Montmorency, Matthew de Beaumont, Dreux de Mouchy-le-
Chatel, Ebble de Roussi, Leon de Mean, Thomas de Marle, Hugh de Crecy,
William de la Roche-Guyon, Hugh du Puiset, and Amaury de Montfort
learned, to their cost, that the king was not to be braved with impunity.
"Bouchard, on taking up arms one day against him, refused to accept his
sword from the hands of one of his people who offered it to him, and said
by way of boast to the countess his wife, 'Noble countess, give thou
joyously this glittering sword to the count thy spouse: he who taketh it
from thee as count will bring it back to thee as king.' "In this very
campaign, Bouchard," by his death," says Suger, "restored peace to the
kingdom, and took away himself and his war to the bottomless pit of
hell." Hugh du Puiset had frequently broken his oaths of peace and
recommenced his devastations and revolts; and Louis resumed his course of
hunting him down, "destroyed the castle of Puiset, threw down the walls,
dug up the wells, and razed it completely to the ground, as a place
devoted to the curse of Heaven." Thomas de Marle, Lord of Couci, had
been_ committing cruel ravages upon the town and church of Laon, lands
and inhabitants; when "Louis, summoned by their complaints, repaired to
Laon, and there, on the advice of the bishops and grandees, and
especially of Raoul, the illustrious Count of Vermandois, the most
powerful, after the king, of the lords in this part of the country, he
determined to go and attack the castle of Couci, and so went back to his
own camp. The people whom he had sent to explore the spot reported that
the approach to the castle was very difficult, and in truth impossible.
Many urged the king to change his purpose in the matter; but he cried,
'Nay, what we resolved on at Laon stands: I would not hold back
therefrom, though it were to save my life. The king's majesty would be
vilified, if I were to fly before this scoundrel.' Forthwith, in spite
of his corpulence, and with admirable ardor, he pushed on with his troops
through ravines and roads encumbered with forests. . . . Thomas, made
prisoner and mortally wounded, was brought to King Louis, and by his
order removed to Laon, to the almost universal satisfaction of his own
folk and ours. Next day, his lands were sold for the benefit of the
public treasury, his ponds were broken up, and King Louis, sparing the
country because he had the lord of it at his disposal, took the road back
to Laon, and afterwards returned in triumph to Paris."
Sometimes, when the people, and their habitual protectors, the bishops,
invoked his aid, Louis would carry his arms beyond his own dominions, by
sole right of justice and kingship. It is known," says Suger, "that
kings have long hands." In 1121, the Bishop of Clermont-Ferrand made a
complaint to the king against William VI., Count of Auvergne, who had
taken possession of the town, and even of the episcopal church, and was
exercising therein "unbridled tyranny." The king, who never lost a
moment when there was a question of helping the Church, took up with
pleasure and solemnity what was, under these circumstances, the cause of
God; and having been unable, either by word of mouth or by letters sealed
with the seal of the king's majesty, to bring back the tyrant to his
duty, he assembled his troops, and led into revolted Auvergne a numerous
army of Frenchmen. He had now become exceeding fat, and could scarce
support the heavy mass of his body. Any one else, however humble, would
have had neither the will nor the power to ride a-horseback; but he,
against the advice of all his friends, listened only to the voice of
courage, braved the fiery suns of June and August, which were the dread
of the youngest knights, and made a scoff of those who could not bear the
heat, although many a time, during the passage of narrow and difficult
swampy places, he was constrained to get himself held on by those about
him." After an obstinate struggle, and at the intervention of William
VII., Duke of Aquitaine, the Count of Auvergne's suzerain, "Louis fixed a
special day for regulating and deciding, in parliament, at Orleans, and
in the duke's presence, between the bishop and the count, the points to
which the Auvergnats had hitherto refused to subscribe. Then
triumphantly leading back his army, he returned victoriously to France."
He had asserted his power, and increased his ascendency, without any
pretension to territorial aggrandizement.
[Illustration: Louis the Fat on an Expedition----69]
Into his relations with his two powerful neighbors, the King of England,
Duke of Normandy, and the Emperor of Germany, Louis the Fat introduced
the same watchfulness, the same firmness, and, at need, the same warlike
energy, whilst observing the same moderation, and the same policy of
holding aloof from all turbulent or indiscreet ambition, adjusting his
pretensions to his power, and being more concerned to govern his kingdom
efficiently than to add to it by conquest. Twice, in 1109 and in 1118,
he had war in Normandy with Henry I., King of England, and he therein was
guilty of certain temerities resulting in a reverse, which he hastened to
repair during a vigorous prosecution of the campaign; but, when once his
honor was satisfied, he showed a ready inclination for the peace which
the Pope, Calixtus II., in council at Rome, succeeded in establishing
between the two rivals. The war with the Emperor of Germany, Henry V.,
in 1124, appeared, at the first blush, a more serious matter. The
emperor had raised a numerous army of Lorrainers, Allemannians,
Bavarians, Suabians, and Saxons, and was threatening the very city of
Rheims with instant attack. Louis hastened to put himself in position;
he went and took solemnly, at the altar of St. Denis, the banner of that
patron of the kingdom, and flew with a mere handful of men to confront
the enemy, and parry the first blow, calling on the whole of France to
follow him. France summoned the flower of her chivalry; and when the
army had assembled from every quarter of the kingdom at Rheims, there was
seen, says Suger, "so great a host of knights and men a-foot, that they
might have been compared to swarms of grasshoppers covering the face of
the earth, not only on the banks of the rivers, but on the mountains and
over the plains." This multitude was formed in three divisions. The
third division was composed of Orleanese, Parisians, the people of
Etampes, and those of St. Denis; and at their head was the king in
person: "With them," said he, "I shall fight bravely and with good
assurance; besides being protected by the saint, my liege lord, I have
here of my country-men those who nurtured me with peculiar affection, and
who, of a surety, will back me living, or carry me off dead, and save my
body." At news of this mighty host, and the ardor with which they were
animated, the Emperor Henry V. advanced no farther, and, before long,
"marching, under some pretext, towards other places, he preferred the
shame of retreating like a coward to the risk of exposing his empire and
himself to certain destruction. After this victory, which was more than
as great as a triumph on the field of battle, the French returned, every
one, to their homes."
The three elements which contributed to the formation and character of
the kingship in France,--the German element, the Roman element, and the
Christian element,--appear in con-junction in the reign of Louis the Fat.
We have still the warrior-chief of a feudal society founded by conquest
in him who, in spite of his moderation and discretion, cried many a time,
says Suger, "What a pitiable state is this of ours, to never have
knowledge and strength both together! In my youth had knowledge, and in
my old age had strength been mine, I might have conquered many kingdoms;
"and probably from this exclamation of a king in the twelfth century came
the familiar proverb, "If youth but knew, and age could do! "We see the
maxims of the Roman empire and reminiscences of Charlemagne in Louis's
habit of considering justice to emanate from the king as fountain head,
and of believing in his right to import it everywhere. And what
conclusion of a reign could be more Christian-like than his when,
"exhausted by the long enfeeblement of his wasted body, but disdaining to
die ignobly or unpreparedly, he called about him pious men, bishops,
abbots, and many priests of holy Church; and then, scorning all false
shame, he demanded to make his confession devoutly before them all, and
to fortify himself against death by the comfortable sacrament of the body
and blood of Christ! Whilst everything is being arranged, the king on a
sudden rises, of himself, dresses himself, issues, fully clad, from his
chamber, to the wonderment of all, advances to meet the body of our Lord
Jesus Christ, and prostrates himself in reverence. Thereupon, in the
presence of all, cleric and laic, he lays aside his kingship, deposes
himself from the government of the state, confesses the sin of having
ordered it ill, hands to his son Louis the king's ring, and binds him to
promise, on oath, to protect the Church of God, the poor, and the orphan,
to respect the rights of everybody, and to keep none prisoner in his
court, save such a one as should have actually transgressed in the court
itself."
This king, so well prepared for death, in his last days found great cause
for rejoicing as a father. William VII., Duke of Aquitaine, had, at his
death, intrusted to him the guardianship of his daughter Eleanor, heiress
of all his dominions, that is to say, of Poitou, of Saintonge, of
Gascony, and of the Basque country, the most beautiful provinces of the
south-west of France, from the lower Loire to the Pyrenees. A marriage
between Eleanor and Louis the Young, already sharing his father's throne,
was soon concluded; and a brilliant embassy, composed of more than five
hundred lords and noble knights, to whom the king had added his intimate
adviser, Suger, set out for Aquitaine, where the ceremony was to take
place. At the moment of departure the king had them all assembled about
him, and, addressing himself to his son, said, "May the strong hand of
God Almighty, by whom kings reign, protect thee, my dear son, both thee
and thine! If, by any mischance, I were to lose thee, thee and those I
send with thee, neither my life, nor my kingdom would thenceforth be
aught to me." The marriage took place at Bordeaux, at the end of July,
1137, and, on the 8th of August following, Louis the Young, on his way
back to Paris, was crowned at Poitiers as Duke of Aquitaine. He there
learned that the king, his father, had lately died, on the 1st of August.
Louis the Fat was far from foreseeing the deplorable issues of the
marriage, which he regarded as one of the blessings of his reign.
In spite of its long duration of forty-three years, the reign of Louis
VII., called the Young, was a period barren of events and of persons
worthy of keeping a place in history. We have already had the story of
this king's unfortunate crusade from 1147 to 1149, the commencement at
Antioch of his imbroglio with his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and the
fatal divorce which, in 1152, at the same time that it freed the king
from a faithless queen, entailed for France the loss of the beautiful
provinces she had brought him in dowry, and caused them to pass into the
possession of Henry II., King of England. Here was the only event, under
Louis the Young's reign, of any real importance, in view of its long and
bloody consequences for his country. A Petty war or a sullen strife
between the Kings of France and England, petty quarrels of Louis with
some of the great lords of his kingdom, certain rigorous measures against
certain districts in travail of local liberties, the first bubblings of
that religious fermentation which resulted before long, in the south of
France, in the crusade against the Albigensians--such were the facts
which went to make up with somewhat of insipidity the annals of this
reign. So long as Suger lived, the kingship preserved at home the wisdom
which it had been accustomed to display, and abroad the respect it had
acquired under Louis the Fat; but at the death of Suger it went on
languishing and declining, without encountering any great obstacles. It
was reserved for Louis the Young's son, Philip Augustus, to open for
France, and for the kingship in France, a new era of strength and
progress.
Philip II., to whom history has preserved the name of Philip Augustus,
given him by his contemporaries, had shared the crown, been anointed, and
taken to wife Isabel of Hainault, a year before the death of Louis VII.
put him in possession of the kingdom. He was as yet only fifteen, and
his father, by his will, had left him under the guidance of Philip of
Alsace, Count of Flanders, as regent, and of Robert Clement, marshal of
France, as governor. But Philip, though he began his reign under this
double influence, soon let it be seen that he intended to reign by
himself, and to reign with vigor. "Whatever my vassals do," said he,
during his minority, "I must bear with their violence and outrageous
insults and villanous misdeeds; but, please God, they will get weak and
old whilst I shall grow in strength and power, and shall be, in my turn,
avenged according to my desire." He was hardly twenty, when, one day,
one of his barons seeing him gnawing, with an air of abstraction and
dreaminess, a little green twig, said to his neighbors, "If any one could
tell me what the king is thinking of, I would give him my best horse."
Another of those present boldly asked the King. "I am thinking,"
answered Philip, "of a certain matter, and that is, whether God will
grant unto me or unto one of my heirs grace to exalt France to the height
at which she was in the time of Charlemagne."
It was not granted to Philip Augustus to resuscitate the Frankish empire
of Charlemagne, a work impossible for him or any one whatsoever in the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries; but he made the extension and
territorial construction of the kingdom of France the chief aim of his
life, and in that work he was successful. Out of the forty-three years
of his reign, twenty-six at the least were war-years, devoted to that
very purpose. During the first six, it was with some of his great French
vassals, the Count of Champagne, the Duke of Burgundy, and even the Count
of Flanders, sometime regent, that Philip had to do battle, for they all
sought to profit by his minority so as to make themselves independent and
aggrandize themselves at the expense of the crown; but, once in
possession of the personal power as well as the title of king, it was,
from 1187 to 1216, against three successive kings of England, Henry II.,
Richard Coeur de Lion, and John Lackland, masters of the most beautiful
provinces of France, that Philip directed his persistent efforts. They
were in respect of power, of political capacity and military popularity,
his most formidable foes. Henry II., what with his ripeness of age, his
ability, energy, and perseverance, without any mean jealousy or puerile
obstinacy, had over Philip every advantage of position and experience,
and he availed himself thereof with discretion, habitually maintaining
his feudal status of great French vassal as well as that of foreign
sovereign, seeking peace rather than strife with his youthful suzerain,
and some-times even going to his aid. He thus played off the greater
part of the undeclared attempts or armed expeditions by which, from 1186
to 1189, Philip tried to cut him short in his French possessions, and,
so long as Henry IL lived, there were but few changes in the territorial
proportions of the two states. But, at Henry's death, Philip found
himself in a very different position towards Henry's two sons, Richard
Coeur de Lion and John Lackland. They were of his own generation; he had
been on terms with them, even in opposition to their own father, of
complicity and familiarity: they had no authority over him, and he had no
respect for them. Richard was the feudal prince, beyond comparison the
boldest, the most unreflecting, the most passionate, the most ruffianly,
the most heroic adventurer of the middle ages, hungering after movement
and action, possessed of a craving spirit for displaying his strength,
and doing his pleasure at all times and in all places, not only in
contempt of the rights and well-being of his subjects, but at the risk of
his own safety, his own power, and even of his crown. Philip was of a
sedate temperament, patient, persevering, moved but little by the spirit
of adventure, more ambitious than fiery, capable of far-reaching designs,
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