town of that name, together with the castle of Montauban.  .  .  .  Now,
though the said count has been found guilty of many matters against God
and against the Church, and our legates, in order to force him to
acknowledgment thereof, have excommunicated his person, and have left his
domains to the first captor, nevertheless, he has not yet been condemned
as a heretic nor as an accomplice in the death of Peter de Castelnau, of
sacred memory, albeit he is strongly suspected thereof.  That is why we
did ordain that, if there should appear against him a proper accuser,
within a certain time, there should be appointed him a day for clearing
himself, according to the form pointed out in our letters, reserving to
ourselves the delivery of a definitive sentence thereupon: in all which
the procedure hath not been according to our orders.  We wot not,
therefore, on what ground we could yet grant to others his dominions
which have not been taken away either from him or from his heirs; and,
above all, we would not appear to have fraudulently extorted from him the
castles he hath committed to us, the will of the Apostle being that we
should refrain from even the appearance of wrong."

But Innocent III. forgot that, in the case of either temporal or
spiritual sovereigns, when there has once been an appeal to force, there
is no stopping, at pleasure and within specified limits, the movement
that has been set going and the agents which have the work in hand.  He
had decreed war against the princes who were heretics or protectors of
heretics; and he had promised their domains to their conquerors.  He
meant to reserve to himself the right of pronouncing definitive judgment
as to the condemnation of princes as heretics, and as to dispossessing
them of their dominions; but when force had done its business on the very
spot, when the condemnation of the princes as heretics had been
pronounced by the pope's legates and their bodily dispossession effected
by his laic allies, the reserves and regrets of Innocent III. were vain.
He had proclaimed two principles--the bodily extirpation of the heretics
and the political dethronement of the princes who were their accomplices
or protectors; but the application of the principles slipped out of his
own hands.  Three local councils assembled in 1210, 1212, and 1213, at
St. Gilles, at Arles, and at Lavaur, and presided over by the pope's
legates, proclaimed the excommunication of Raymond VI., and the cession
of his dominions to Simon de Montfort, who took possession of them for
himself and his comrades.  Nor were the pope's legates without their
share in the conquest; Arnauld Amaury, Abbot of Citeaux, became
Archbishop of Narbonne; and Abbot Foulques of Marseilles, celebrated in
his youth as a gallant troubadour, was Bishop of Toulouse and the most
ardent of the crusaders.  When these conquerors heard that the pope had
given a kind reception to Raymond VI. and his young son, and lent a
favorable ear to their complaints, they sent haughty warnings to Innocent
III., giving him to understand that the work was all over, and that, if
he meddled, Simon de Montfort and his warriors might probably not bow to
his decisions.  Don Pedro II., king of Aragon, had strongly supported
before Innocent III. the claims of the Count of Toulouse and of the
southern princes his allies.  "He cajoled the lord pope," says the
prejudiced chronicler of these events, the monk Peter of Vaulx-Cernay,
"so far as to persuade him that the cause of the faith was achieved
against the heretics, they being put to distant flight and completely
driven from the Albigensian country, and that accordingly it was
necessary for him to revoke altogether the indulgence be had granted to
the crusaders.  .  .  . The sovereign pontiff, too credulously listening
to the perfidious suggestions of the said king, readily assented to his
demands, and wrote to the Count of Montfort, with orders and commands to
restore without delay to the Counts of Comminges and of Foix, and to
Gaston of Beam, very wicked and abandoned people, the lands which, by
just judgment of God and by the aid of the crusaders, he at last had
conquered."  But, in spite of his desire to do justice, Innocent III.,
studying policy rather than moderation, did not care to enter upon a
struggle against the agents, ecclesiastical and laic, whom he had let
loose upon Southern France.  In November, 1215, the fourth Lateran
council met at Rome; and the Count of Toulouse, his son, and the Count of
Foix brought their claims before it.  "It is quite true," says Peter of
Vaulx-Cernay, "that they found there--and, what is worse, amongst the
prelates--certain folk who opposed the cause of the faith, and labored
for the restoration of the said counts; but the counsel of Ahitophel did
not prevail, for the lord pope, in agreement with the greater and saner
part of the council, decreed that the city of Toulouse and other
territories conquered by the crusaders should be ceded to the Count of
Montfort, who, more than any other, had borne himself right valiantly and
loyally in the holy enterprise; and, as for the domains which Count
Raymond possessed in Provence, the sovereign pontiff decided that they
should be reserved to him, in order to make provision, either with part
or even the whole, for the son of this count, provided always that, by
sure signs of fealty and good behavior, he should show himself worthy of
compassion."

This last inclination towards compassion on the part of the pope in favor
of the young Count Raymond, "provided he showed himself worthy of it,"
remained as fruitless as the remonstrances addressed to his legates; for
on the 17th of July, 1216, seven months after the Lateran council,
Innocent III. died, leaving Simon de Montfort and his comrades in
possession of all they had taken, and the war still raging between the
native princes of Southern France and the foreign conquerors.  The
primitive, religious character of the crusade wore off more and more;
worldly ambition and the spirit of conquest became more and more
predominant; and the question lay far less between catholics and heretics
than between the old and new masters of the country, between the
independence of the southern people and the triumph of warriors come
from the north of France, that is to say, between two different races,
civilizations, and languages.  Raymond VI. and his son recovered
thenceforth certain supports and opportunities of which hitherto the
accusation of heresy and the judgments of the court of Rome had robbed
them; their neighboring allies and their secret or intimidated partisans
took fresh courage; the fortune of battle became shifty; successes and
reverses were shared by both sides; and not only many small places and
castles, but the largest towns, Toulouse amongst others, fell into the
hands of each party alternately.  Innocent III.'s successor in the Holy
See, Pope Honorius III., though at first very pronounced in his
opposition to the Albigensians, had less ability, less perseverance, and
less influence than his predecessor.  Finally, on the 20th of June, 1218,
Simon de Montfort, who had been for nine months unsuccessfully besieging
Toulouse, which had again come into the possession of Raymond VI., was
killed by a shower of stones, under the walls of the place, and left to
his son Amaury the inheritance of his war and his conquests, but not of
his vigorous genius and his warlike renown.

[Illustration: Death of De Montfort----104]

The struggle still dragged on for five years with varied fortune on each
side, but Amaury de Montfort was losing ground every day, and Raymond
VI., when he died in August, 1222, had recovered the greater part of his
dominions.  His son, Raymond VII., continued the war for eighteen months
longer, with enough of popular favor and of success to make his enemies
despair of recovering their advantages; and, on the 14th of January,
1224, Amaury de Montfort, after having concluded with the Counts of
Toulouse and Foix a treaty which seemed to have only a provisional
character, "went forth," says the History of Languedoc, "with all the
French from Carcassonne, and left forever the country which his house had
possessed for nearly fourteen years."  Scarcely had he arrived at the
court of Louis VIII., who had just succeeded his father, Philip Augustus,
when he ceded to the King of France his rights over the domains which the
crusaders had conquered by a deed conceived in these terms: "Know that we
give up to our Lord Louis, the illustrious King of the French, and to his
heirs forever, to dispose of according to their pleasure, all the
privileges and gifts that the Roman Church did grant unto our father
Simon of pious memory, in respect of the countship of Toulouse and other
districts in Albigeois; supposing that the pope do accomplish all the
demands made to him by the king through the Archbishop of Bourges, and
the Bishops of Langres and Chartres; else, be it known for certain that
we cede not to any one aught of all these domains."

Whilst this cruel war lasted Philip Augustus would not take any part in
it.  Not that he had any leaning towards the Albigensian heretics on the
score of creed or religious liberty; but his sense of justice and
moderation was shocked at the violence employed against them, and he
had a repugnance to the idea of taking part in the devastation of the
beautiful southern provinces.  He took it ill, moreover, that the pope
should arrogate to himself the right of despoiling of their dominions, on
the ground of heresy, princes who were vassals of the King of France;
and, without offering any formal opposition, he had no mind to give his
assent thereto.  When Innocent III. called upon him to co-operate in the
crusade, Philip answered, "that he had at his flanks two huge and
terrible lions, the Emperor Otho, and King John of England, who were
working with all their might to bring trouble upon the kingdom of France;
that, consequently, he had no inclination at all to leave France, or even
to send his son; but it seemed to him enough, for the present, if he
allowed his barons to march against the disturbers of peace and of the
faith in the province of Narbonne."  In 1213, when Simon de Montfort had
gained the battle of Muret, Philip allowed Prince Louis to go and look on
when possession was taken of Toulouse by the crusaders; but when Louis
came back and reported to his father, "in the presence of the princes and
barons who were, for the most part, relatives and allies of Count
Raymond, the great havoc committed by Count Simon in the city after
surrender, the king withdrew to his apartments without any ado beyond
saying to those present, 'Sirs, I have yet hope that before very long
Count de Montfort and his brother Guy will die at their work, for God is
just, and will suffer these counts to perish thereat, because their
quarrel is unjust.'"  Nevertheless, at a little later period, when the
crusade was at its greatest heat, Philip, on the pope's repeated
entreaty, authorized his son to take part in it with such lords as might
be willing to accompany him; but he ordered that the expedition should
not start before the spring, and, on the occurrence of some fresh
incident, he had it further put off until the following year.  He
received visits from Count Raymond VI., and openly testified good will
towards him.  When Simon de Montfort was decisively victorious, and in
possession of the places wrested from Raymond, Philip Augustus recognized
accomplished facts, and received the new Count of Toulouse as his vassal;
but when, after the death of Simon de Montfort and Innocent III., the
question was once more thrown open, and when Raymond VI., first, and then
his son Raymond VII., had recovered the greater part of their dominions,
Philip formally refused to recognize Amaury de Montfort as successor to
his father's conquests: nay, he did more; he refused to accept the
cession of those conquests, offered to him by Amaury de Montfort and
pressed upon him by Pope Honorius III.  Philip Augustus was not a
scrupulous sovereign, nor disposed to compromise himself for the mere
sake of defending justice and humanity; but he was too judicious not to
respect and protect, to a certain extent, the rights of his vassals as
well as his own, and, at the same time, too discreet to involve himself,
without necessity, in a barbarous and dubious war.  He held aloof from
the crusade against the Albigensians with as much wisdom, and more than
as much dignity, as he had displayed, seventeen years before, in
withdrawing from the crusade against the Saracens.

He had, in 1216, another great chance of showing his discretion.  The
English barons were at war with their king, John Lackland, in defence of
Magna Charta, which they had obtained the year before; and they offered
the crown of England to the King of France, for his son, Prince Louis.
Before accepting, Philip demanded twenty-four hostages, taken from the
men of note in the country, as a guarantee that the offer would be
supported in good earnest; and the hostages were sent to him.  But Pope
Innocent III. had lately released King John from his oath in respect of
Magna Charta, and had excommunicated the insurgent barons; and he now
instructed his legate to oppose the projected design, with a threat of
excommunicating the King of France.  Philip Augustus, who in his youth
had dreamed of resuscitating the empire of Charlemagne, was strongly
tempted to seize the opportunity of doing over again the work of William
the Conqueror; but he hesitated to endanger his power and his kingdom in
such a war against King John and the pope.  The prince was urgent in
entreating his father: "Sir," said he, "I am your liegeman for the fief
you have given me on this side of the sea; but it pertains not to you to
decide aught as to the kingdom of England; I do beseech you to place no
obstacle in the way of my departure."  The king, "seeing his son's firm
resolution and anxiety," says the historian Matthew Paris, "was one with
him in feeling and desire; but, foreseeing the dangers of events to come,
he did not give his public consent, and, without any expression of wish
or counsel, permitted him to go, with the gift of his blessing."  It was
the young and ambitious Princess Blanche of Castille, wife of Prince
Louis, and destined to be the mother of St. Louis, who, after her
husband's departure for England, made it her business to raise troops for
him and to send him means of sustaining the war.  Events justified the
discreet reserve of Philip Augustus; for John Lackland, after having
suffered one reverse previously, died on the 19th of October, 1216; his
death broke up the party of the insurgent barons; and his son, Henry
III., who was crowned on the 28th of October, in Gloucester cathedral,
immediately confirmed the Great Charter.  Thus the national grievance
vanished, and national feeling resumed its sway in England; the French
everywhere became unpopular; and after a few months' struggle, with equal
want of skill and success, Prince Louis gave up his enterprise and
returned to France with his French comrades, on no other conditions but a
mutual exchange of prisoners, and an amnesty for the English who had been
his adherents.

At this juncture, as well as in the crusade against the Albigensians,
Philip Augustus behaved towards the pope with a wisdom and ability hard
of attainment at any time, and very rare in his own: he constantly
humored the papacy without being subservient to it, and he testified
towards it his respect, and at the same time his independence.  He
understood all the gravity of a rupture with Rome, and he neglected
nothing to avoid one; but he also considered that Rome, herself not
wanting in discretion, would be content with the deference of the King of
France rather than get embroiled with him by exacting his submission.
Philip Augustus, in his political life, always preserved this proper
mean, and he found it succeed; but in his domestic life there came a day
when he suffered himself to be hurried out of his usual deference towards
the pope; and, after a violent attempt at resistance, he resigned himself
to submission.  Three years after the death of his first wife, Isabel of
Hainault, who had left him a son, Prince Louis, he married Princess
Ingeburga of Denmark, without knowing anything at all of her, just as it
generally happens in the case of royal marriages.  No sooner had she
become his wife than, without any cause that can be assigned with
certainty, he took such a dislike to her that, towards the end of the
same year, he demanded of and succeeded in obtaining from a French
council, held at Compiegne, nullity of his marriage on the ground of
prohibited consanguinity.  "O, naughty France! naughty France!  O, Rome!
Rome!" cried the poor Danish princess, on learning this decision; and she
did in fact appeal to Pope Celestine III.  Whilst the question was being
investigated at Rome, Ingeburga, whom Philip had in vain tried to send
back to Denmark, was marched about, under restraint, in France from
castle to castle and convent to convent, and treated with iniquitous and
shocking severity.  Pope Celestine, after examination, annulled the
decision of the council of Compiegne touching the pretended
consanguinity, leaving in suspense the question of divorce, and,
consequently, without breaking the tie of marriage between the king and
the Danish princess.  "I have seen," he wrote to the Archbishop of Sens,
"the genealogy sent to me by the bishops, and it is due to that
inspection and the uproar caused by this scandal that I have annulled the
decree; take care now, therefore, that Philip do not marry again, and so
break the tie which still unites him to the Church."  Philip paid no heed
to this canonical injunction; his heart was set upon marrying again; and,
after having unsuccessfully sought the band of two German princesses, on
the borders of the Rhine, who were alarmed by the fate of Ingeburga, he
obtained that of a princess, a Tyrolese by origin, Agnes (according to
others, Mary) of Merania, that is, Moravia (an Austrian province, in
German _Moehren,_ out of which the chroniclers of the time made Meranie
or Merania, the name that has remained in the history of Agnes).  She was
the daughter of Berthold, Marquis of Istria, whom, about 1180, the
Emperor Frederick Barbarossa had made Duke of Moravia.  According to all
contemporary chronicles, Agnes was not only beautiful, but charming; she
made a great impression at the court of France; and Philip Augustus,
after his marriage with her in June, 1196, became infatuated with her.
But a pope more stern and bold than Celestine III., Innocent III., had
just been raised to the Holy See, and was exerting himself, in court as
well as monastery, to effect a reformation of morals.  Immediately after
his accession, he concerned himself with the conjugal irregularity in
which the King of France was living.  "My predecessor, Celestine," he
wrote to the Bishop of Paris, "would fain have put a stop to this
scandal, but he was unsuccessful; as for me, I am quite resolved to
prosecute his work, and obtain by all and any means fulfilment of God's
law.  Be instant in speaking thereof to the king on my behalf; and tell
him that his obstinate refusals may probably bring upon him both the
wrath of God and the thunders of the Church."  And indeed Philip's
refusals were very obstinate; for the pride of the king and the feelings
of the man were equally wounded.  "I had rather lose half my domains,"
said he, "than separate from Agnes."  The pope threatened him with the
interdict,--that is, the suspension of all religious ceremonies,
festivals, and forms in the Church of France.  Philip resisted not only
the threat, but also the sentence of the interdict, which was actually
pronounced, first in the churches of the royal domain, and afterwards in
those of the whole kingdom.  "So wroth was the king," says the chronicle
of St. Denis, "that he thrust from their sees all the prelates of his
kingdom, because they had assented to the interdict."  "I had rather turn
Mussulman," said Philip; "Saladin was a happy man, for he had no pope."
But Innocent III. was inflexible; he claimed respect for laws divine and
human, for the domestic hearth and public order.  The conscience of the
nation was troubled.  Agnes herself applied to the pope, urging her
youth, her ignorance of the world, the sincerity and purity of her love
for her husband.  Innocent III. was touched, and before long gave
indisputable evidence that he was, but without budging from his duty and
his right as a Christian.  For four years the struggle went on.  At last
Philip yielded to the injunction of the pope and the feeling of his
people; he sent away Agnes, and recalled Ingeburga.  The pope, in his
hour of victory, showed his sense of equity and his moral appreciation;
taking into consideration the good faith of Agnes in respect of her
marriage, and Philip's possible mistake as to his right to marry her, he
declared the legitimacy of the two children born of their union.  Agnes
retired to Poissy, where, a few months afterwards, she died.  Ingeburga
resumed her title and rights as queen, but without really enjoying them.
Philip, incensed as well as beaten, banished her far from him and his
court, to Etampes, where she lived eleven years in profound retirement.
It was only in 1212 that, to fully satisfy the pope, Philip, more
persevering in his political wisdom than his domestic prejudices,
restored the Danish princess to all her royal station at his side.  She
was destined to survive him.

There can be little doubt but that the affection of Philip Augustus for
Agnes of Merania was sincere; nothing can be better proof of it than the
long struggle he maintained to prevent separation from her; but, to say
nothing of the religious scruples which at last, perhaps, began to prick
the conscience of the king, great political activity and the government
of a kingdom are a powerful cure for sorrows of the heart, and seldom is
there a human soul so large and so constant as to have room for
sentiments and interests so different, both of them at once, and for a
long continuance.  It has been shown with what intelligent assiduity
Philip Augustus strove to extend, or, rather, to complete the kingdom of
France; what a mixture of firmness and moderation he brought to bear upon
his relations with his vassals, as well as with his neighbors; and what
bravery he showed in war, though he preferred to succeed by the weapons
of peace.  He was as energetic and effective in the internal
administration of his kingdom as in foreign affairs.  M. Leopold Delisle,
one of the most learned French academicians, and one of the most accurate
in his knowledge, has devoted a volume of more than seven hundred pages
octavo to a simple catalogue of the official acts of Philip Augustus, and
this catalogue contains a list of two thousand two hundred and thirty-six
administrative acts of all kinds, of which M. Delisle confines himself to
merely setting forth the title and object.  Search has been made in this
long table to see what part was taken by Philip Augustus in the
establishment and interior regulation of the communes, that great fact
which is so conspicuous in the history of French civilization, and which
will before long be made the topic of discourse here.  The search brings
to light, during this reign, forty-one acts confirming certain communes
already established, or certain privileges previously granted to certain
populations, forty-three acts establishing new communes, or granting new
local privileges, and nine acts decreeing suppression of certain
communes, or a repressive intervention of the royal authority in their
internal regulation, on account of quarrels or irregularities in their
relations either with their lord, or, especially, with their bishop.
These mere figures show the liberal character of the government of Philip
Augustus, in respect of this important work of the eleventh, twelfth, and
thirteenth centuries.  Nor are we less struck by his efficient energy in
his care for the interests and material civilization of his people.  In
1185, "as he was walking one day in his palace, he placed himself at a
window whence he was sometimes pleased, by way of pastime, to watch the
Seine flowing by.  Some carts, as they passed, caused the mud with which
the streets were filled to emit a fetid smell, quite unbearable.  The
king, shocked at what was as unhealthy as it was disgusting, sent for the
burghers and provost of the city, and ordered that all the thoroughfares
and streets of Paris should be paved with hard and solid stone, for this
right Christian prince aspired to rid Paris of her ancient name, Lutetia
(Mud-town)."  It is added that, on hearing of so good a resolution, a
moneyed man of the day, named Gerard de Poissy, volunteered to contribute
towards the construction of the pavement eleven thousand silver marks.
Nor was Philip Augustus less concerned for the external security than for
the internal salubrity of Paris.  In 1190, on the eve of his departure
for the crusade, "he ordered the burghers of Paris to surround with a
good wall, flanked by towers, the city he loved so well, and to make
gates thereto;" and in twenty years this great work was finished on both
sides of the Seine.  "The king gave the same orders," adds the historian
Rigord, "about the towns and castles of all his kingdom; "and indeed it
appears from the catalogue of M. Leopold Delisle, at the date of 1193,
"that, at the request of Philip Augustus, Peter de Courtenai, Count of
Nevers, with the aid of the church-men, had the walls of the town of
Auxerre built."  And Philip's foresight went beyond such important
achievements.  "He had a good wall built to enclose the wood of
Vincennes, heretofore open to any sort of folk.  The King of England, on
hearing thereof, gathered a great mass of fawns, hinds, does, and bucks,
taken in his forests in Normandy and Aquitaine; and having had them
shipped aboard a large covered vessel, with suitable fodder, he sent them
by way of the Seine to King Philip Augustus, his liege-lord at Paris.
King Philip received the gift gladly, had his parks stocked with the
animals, and put keepers over them."  A feeling, totally unconnected with
the pleasures of the chase, caused him to order an enclosure very
different from that of Vincennes.  "The common cemetery of Paris, hard by
the Church of the Holy Innocents, opposite the street of St. Denis, had
remained up to that time open to all passers, man and beast, without
anything to prevent it from being confounded with the most profane spot;
and the king, hurt at such indecency, had it enclosed by high stone
walls, with as many gates as were judged necessary, which were closed
every night."  At the same time he had built, in this same quarter, the
first great municipal market-places, enclosed, likewise, by a wall, with
gates shut at night, and surmounted by a sort of covered gallery.  He was
not quite a stranger to a certain instinct, neither systematic nor of
general application, but practical and effective on occasion, in favor of
the freedom of industry and commerce.  Before his time, the ovens
employed by the baking trade in Paris were a monopoly for the profit of
certain religious or laic establishments; but when Philip Augustus
ordered the walling in of the new and much larger area of the city "he
did not think it right to render its new inhabitants subject to these old
liabilities, and he permitted all the bakers to have ovens wherein to
bake their bread, either for themselves, or for all individuals who might
wish to make use of them."  Nor were churches and hospitals a whit less
than the material interests of the people an object of solicitude to him.
His reign saw the completion, and, it might almost be said, the
construction of _Notre-Dame de Paris,_ the frontage of which, in
particular, was the work of this epoch.  At the same time the king had
the palace of the Louvre repaired and enlarged; and he added to it that
strong tower in which he kept in captivity for more than twelve years
Ferrand, Count of Flanders, taken prisoner at the battle of Bouvines.  It
would be a failure of justice and truth not to add to these proofs of
manifold and indefatigable activity on the part of Philip Augustus the
constant interest he testified in letters, science, study, the University
of Paris, and its masters and pupils.  It was to him that in 1200, after
a violent riot, in which they considered they had reason to complain of
the provost of Paris, the students owed a decree, which, by regarding
them as clerics, exempted them from the ordinary criminal jurisdiction,
so as to render them subject only to ecclesiastical authority.  At that
time there was no idea how to efficiently protect freedom save by
granting some privilege.

A death which seems premature for a man as sound and strong in
constitution as in judgment struck down Philip Augustus at the age of
only fifty-eight, as he was on his way from Pacy-sur-Eure to Paris to be
present at the council which was to meet there and once more take up the
affair of the Albigensians.  He had for several months been battling with
an incessant fever; he was obliged to halt at Mantes, and there he died
on the 14th of January, 1223, leaving the kingdom of France far more
extensive and more compact, and the kingship in France far stronger and
more respected than he had found them.  It was the natural and
well-deserved result of his life.  At a time of violence and irregular
adventure, he had shown to Europe the spectacle of an earnest,
far-sighted, moderate, and able government, and one which in the end,
under many hard trials, had nearly always succeeded in its designs,
during a reign of forty-three years.

He disposed, by will, of a considerable amount amassed without parsimony,
and even, historians say, in spite of a royal magnificence.  We will take
from that will but two paragraphs, the first two:--

"We will and prescribe first of all that, without any gainsaying, our
testamentary executors do levy and set aside, out of our possessions,
fifty thousand livres of Paris, in order to restore, as God shall inspire
them with wisdom, whatsoever may be due to those from whom they shall
recognize that we have unjustly taken or extorted or kept back aught; and
we do ordain this most strictly."

"We do give to our dear spouse _Isamber_ (evidently _Inyeburya_), Queen
of the French, ten thousand livres of Paris.  We might have given more to
the said queen, but we have confined ourselves to this sum in order that
we might make more complete restitution and reparation of what we have
unjustly levied."

There is in these two cases of testamentary reparation, to persons
unknown on the one hand and to a lady long maltreated on the other, a
touch of probity and honorable regret for wrong-doing which arouses for
this great king, in his dying hour, more moral esteem than one would
otherwise be tempted to feel for him.

His son, Louis VIII., inherited a great kingdom, an undisputed crown, and
a power that was respected.  It was matter of general remark, moreover,
that, by his mother, Isabel of Hainault, he was descended in the direct
line from Hermengarde, Countess of Namur, daughter of Charles of
Lorraine, the last of the Carlovingians.  Thus the claims of the two
dynasties of Charlemagne and of Hugh Capet were united in his person;
and, although the authority of the Capetians was no longer disputed,
contemporaries were glad to see in Louis VIII. this two-fold heirship,
which gave him the perfect stamp of a legitimate monarch.  He was,
besides, the first Capetian whom the king his father had not considered
it necessary to have consecrated during his own life so as to impress
upon him in good time the seal of religion.  Louis was consecrated at
Rheims no earlier than the 6th of August, 1223, three weeks after the
death of Philip Augustus; and his consecration was celebrated, at Paris
as well as at Rheims, with rejoicings both popular and magnificent.
But in the condition in which France was during the thirteenth century,
amidst a civilization still so imperfect and without the fortifying
institutions of a free government, no accidental good fortune could make
up for a king's want of personal merit; and Louis VIII. was a man of
downright mediocrity, without foresight, volatile in his resolves and
weak and fickle in the execution of them.  He, as well as Philip
Augustus, had to make war on the King of England, and negotiate with the
pope on the subject of the Albigensians; but at one time he followed,
without well understanding it, his father's policy, at another he
neglected it for some whim, or under some temporary influence.  Yet he
was not unsuccessful in his wax-like enterprises; in his campaign against
Henry III., King of England, he took Niort, St. Jean d'Angely, and
Rochelle; he accomplished the subjection of Limousin and Perigord; and
had he pushed on his victories beyond the Garonne, he might perhaps have
deprived the English of Aquitaine, their last possession in France; but
at the solicitation of Pope Honorius III., he gave up this war, to resume
the crusade against the Albigensians.  Philip Augustus had foreseen this
mistake.  After my death," he had said, "the clergy will use all their
efforts to entangle my son Louis in the matters of the Albigensians; but
he is in weak and shattered health; he will be unable to bear the
fatigue; he will soon die, and then the kingdom will be left in the hands
of a woman and children; and so there will be no lack of dangers."  The
prediction was realized.  The military campaign of Louis VIII. on the
Rhone was successful; after a somewhat difficult siege, he took Avignon;
the principal towns in the neighborhood, Nimes and Arles, amongst others,
submitted; Amaury de Montfort had ceded to him all his rights over his
father's conquests in Languedoc; and the Albigensians were so completely
destroyed or dispersed or cowed that, when it seemed good to make a
further example amongst them of the severity of the Church against
heretics, it was a hard matter to rout out in the diocese of Narbonne one
of their former preachers, Peter Isarn, an old man hidden in an obscure
retreat, from which he was dragged to be burned in solemn state.  This
was Louis VIII.'s last exploit in Southern France.  He was displeased
with the pope, whom he reproached with not keeping all his promises; his
troops were being decimated by sickness; and he was deserted by Theobald
IV., Count of Champagne, after serving, according to feudal law, for
forty days.

Louis, incensed, disgusted, and ill, himself left his army, to return to
his own Northern France; but he never reached it, for fever compelled him
to halt at Montpensier, in Auvergne, where he died on the 8th of
November, 1226, after a reign of three years, adding to the history of
France no glory save that of having been the son of Philip Augustus, the
husband of Blanche of Castille, and the father of St. Louis.

We have already perused the most brilliant and celebrated amongst the
events of St. Louis's reign, his two crusades against the Mussulmans; and
we have learned to know the man at the same time with the event, for it
was in these warlike outbursts of his Christian faith that the king's
character, nay, his whole soul, was displayed in all its originality and
splendor.  It was his good fortune, moreover, to have at that time as his
comrade and biographer, Sire de Joinville, one of the most sprightly and
charming writers of the nascent French language.  It is now of Louis in
France and of his government at home that we have to take note.  And in
this part of his history he is not the only royal and really regnant
personage we encounter: for of the forty-four years of St. Louis's reign,
nearly fifteen, with a long interval of separation, pertained to the
government of Queen Blanche of Castille rather than that of the king her
son.  Louis, at his accession in 1226, was only eleven; and he remained a
minor up to the age of twenty-one, in 1236, for the time of majority in
the case of royalty was not yet specially and rigorously fixed.  During
those ten years Queen Blanche governed France; not at all, as is commonly
asserted, with the official title of regent, but simply as guardian of
the king her son.  With a good sense really admirable in a person so
proud and ambitious, she saw that official power was ill suited to her
woman's condition, and would weaken rather than strengthen her; and she
screened herself from view behind her son.  He it was who, in 1226, wrote
to the great vassals, bidding them to his consecration; he it was who
reigned and commanded; and his name alone appeared on royal decrees and
on treaties.  It was not until twenty-two years had passed, in 1248, that
Louis, on starting for the crusade, officially delegated to his mother
the kingly authority, and that Blanche, during her son's absence, really
governed with the title of regent, up to the 1st of December, 1252, the
day of his death.

During the first period of his government, and so long as her son's
minority lasted, Queen Blanche had to grapple with intrigues, plots,
insurrections, and open war, and, what was still worse for her, with the
insults and calumnies of the crown's great vassals, burning to seize once
more, under a woman's government, the independence and power which had
been effectually disputed with them by Philip Augustus.  Blanche resisted
their attempts, at one time with open and persevering energy, at another
dexterously with all the tact, address, and allurements of a woman.
Though she was now forty years of age, she was beautiful, elegant,
attractive, full of resources, and of grace in her conversation as well
as her administration, endowed with all the means of pleasing, and
skilful in availing herself of them with a coquetry which was
occasionally more telling than discreet.  The malcontents spread the
most odious scandals about her.  It so happened that one of the most
considerable amongst the great vassals of France, Theobald IV., Count of
Champagne, a brilliant and gay knight, an ingenious and prolific poet,
had conceived a passion for her; and it was affirmed not only that she
had yielded to his desires, in order to keep him bound to her service,
but that she had, a while ago, in concert with him, murdered her husband,
King Louis VIII.  In 1230, some of the greatest barons of the kingdom,
the Count of Brittany, the Count of Boulogne, and the Count of St. Pol
formed a coalition for an attack upon Count Theobald, and invaded
Champagne.  Blanche, taking with her the young king her son, went to
the aid of Count Theobald, and, on arriving near Troyes, she had orders
given, in the king's name, for the barons to withdraw: "If you have
plaint to make," said she, "against the Count of Champagne, present
before me your claim, and I will do you justice."  "We will not plead
before you," they answered, "for the custom of women is to fix their
choice upon him, in preference to other men, who has slain their
husband."  But in spite of this insulting defiance, the barons did
withdraw.  Five years later, in 1235, the Count of Champagne had, in his
turn, risen against the king, and was forced, as an escape from imminent
defeat, to accept severe terms.

An interview took place between Queen Blanche and him; and "'Pardie,
Count Theobald,' said the queen, 'you ought not to have been against us;
you ought surely to have remembered the kindness shown you by the king my
son, who came to your aid, to save your land from the barons of France
when they would fain have set fire to it all and laid it in ashes.'  The
count cast a look upon the queen, who was so virtuous and so beautiful
that at her great beauty he was all abashed, and answered her, 'By my
faith, madame, my heart and my body and all my land is at your command,
and there is nothing which to please you I would not readily do; and
against you or yours, please God, I will never go.'  Thereupon he went
his way full pensively, and often there came back to his remembrance the
queen's soft glance and lovely countenance.  Then his heart was touched
by a soft and amorous thought.  But when he remembered how high a dame
she was, so good and pure that he could never enjoy her, his soft thought
of love was changed to a great sadness.  And because deep thoughts
engender melancholy, it was counselled unto him by certain wise men that
he should make his study of canzonets for the viol and soft delightful
ditties.  So made he the most beautiful canzonets and the most delightful
and most melodious that at any time were heard."  (_Histoire des Dues et
des Comtes de Champagne,_ by M. d'Arbois de Jubainville, t. iv.  pp. 249,
280; _Chroniques de Saint-Denis,_ in the _Recueil des Historiens des
Gaules et de France,_ t. xxi.  pp. 111, 112.)

Neither in the events nor in the writings of the period is it easy to
find anything which can authorize the accusations made by the foes of
Queen Blanche.  There is no knowing whether her heart were ever so little
touched by the canzonets of Count Theobald; but it is certain that
neither the poetry nor the advances of the count made any difference in
the resolutions and behavior of the queen.  She continued her resistance
to the pretensions and machinations of the crown's great vassals, whether
foes or lovers, and she carried forward, in the face and in the teeth of
all, the extension of the domains and the power of the kingship.  We
observe in her no prompting of enthusiasm, of sympathetic charitableness,
or of religious scrupulousness, that is, none of those grand moral
impulses which are characteristic of Christian piety, and which were
predominant in St. Louis.  Blanche was essentially politic and concerned
with her temporal interests and successes; and it was not from her
teaching or her example that her son imbibed those sublime and
disinterested feelings which stamped him the most original and the rarest
on the roll of glorious kings.  What St. Louis really owed to his mother
--and it was a great deal--was the steady triumph which, whether by arms
or by negotiation, Blanche gained over the great vassals, and the
preponderance which, amidst the struggles of the feudal system, she
secured for the kingship of her son in his minority.  She saw by profound
instinct what forces and alliances might be made serviceable to the
kingly power against its rivals.  When, on the 29th of November, 1226,
only three weeks after the death of her husband, Louis VIII., she had her
son crowned at Rheims, she bade to the ceremony not only the prelates and
grandees of the kingdom, but also the inhabitants of the neighboring
communes; wishing to let the great lords see the people surrounding the
royal child.  Two years later, in 1228, amidst the insurrection of the
barons, who were assembled at Corbeil, and who meditated seizing the
person of the young king during his halt at Montlhery on his march to
Paris, Queen Blanche had summoned to her side, together with the faithful
chivalry of the country, the burghers of Paris and of the neighborhood;
and they obeyed the summons with alacrity.  "They went forth all under
arms, and took the road to Montlhery, where they found the king, and
escorted him to Paris, all in their ranks and in order of battle.  From
Montlhery to Paris, the road was lined, on both sides, by men-at-arms and
others, who loudly besought Our Lord to grant the young king long life
and prosperity, and to vouchsafe him protection against all his enemies.
As soon as they set out from Paris, the lords, having been told the news,
and not considering themselves in a condition to fight so great a host,
retired each to his own abode; and by the ordering of God, who disposes
as he pleases Him of times and the deeds of men, they dared not undertake
anything against the king during the rest of this year."  (_Vie de Saint
Louis,_ by Lenain de Tillemont, t. i.  pp. 429, 478.)

Eight years later, in 1236, Louis IX. attained his majority, and his
mother transferred to him a power respected, feared, and encompassed by
vassals always turbulent and still often aggressive, but disunited,
weakened, intimidated, or discredited, and always outwitted, for a space
of ten years, in their plots.

When she had secured the political position of the king her son, and as
the time of his majority approached, Queen Blanche gave her attention to
his domestic life also.  She belonged to the number of those who aspire
to play the part of Providence towards the objects of their affection,
and to regulate their destiny in everything.  Louis was nineteen; he was
handsome, after a refined and gentle style which spoke of moral worth
without telling of great physical strength; he had delicate and chiselled
features, a brilliant complexion, and light hair, abundant and glossy,
which, through his grandmother Isabel, he inherited from the family of
the Counts of Hainault.  He displayed liveliness and elegance in his
tastes; he was fond of amusements, games, hunting, hounds and
hawking-birds, fine clothes, magnificent furniture.  A holy man, they
say, even reproached the queen his mother with having winked at certain
inclinations evinced by him towards irregular connections.  Blanche
determined to have him married; and had no difficulty in exciting in him
so honorable a desire.  Raymond Beranger, Count of Provence, had a
daughter, his eldest, named Marguerite, "who was held," say the
chronicles, "to be the most noble, most beautiful, and best educated
princess at that time in Europe.  .  .  .  By the advice of his mother
and of the wisest persons in his kingdom," Louis asked for her hand in
marriage.  The Count of Provence was overjoyed at the proposal; but he
was somewhat anxious about the immense dowry which, it was said, he would
have to give his daughter.  His intimate adviser was a Provencal
nobleman, named Romeo de Villeneuve, who said to him, "Count, leave it to
me, and let not this great expense cause you any trouble.  If you marry
your eldest high, the more consideration of the alliance will get the
others married better and at less cost."  Count Raymond listened to
reason, and before long acknowledged that his adviser was right.  He had
four daughters, Marguerite, Eleanor, Sancie, and Beatrice; and when
Marguerite was Queen of France, Eleanor became Queen of England, Sancie
Countess of Cornwall and afterwards Queen of the Romans, and Beatrice
Countess of Anjou and Provence, and ultimately Queen of Sicily.  Princess
Marguerite arrived in France escorted by a brilliant embassy, and the
marriage was celebrated at Sens, on the 27th of May, 1234, amidst great
rejoicings and abundant largess to the people.  As soon as he was married
and in possession of happiness at home, Louis of his own accord gave up
the worldly amusements for which he had at first displayed a taste; his
hunting establishment, his games, his magnificent furniture and dress,
gave place to simpler pleasures and more Christian occupations.  The
active duties of the kingship, the fervent and scrupulous exercise of
piety, the pure and impassioned joys of conjugal life, the glorious plans
of a knight militant of the cross, were the only things which took up the
thoughts and the time of this young king, who was modestly laboring to
become a saint and a hero.

There was one heartfelt discomfort which disturbed and troubled sometimes
the sweetest moments of his life.  Queen Blanche, having got her son
married, was jealous of the wife and of the happiness she had conferred
upon her; jealous as mother and as queen, a rival for affection and for
empire.  This sad and hateful feeling hurried her into acts as devoid of
dignity as they were of justice and kindness.  "The harshness of Queen
Blanche towards Queen Marguerite," says Joinville, "was such that Queen
Blanche would not suffer, so far as her power went, that her son should
keep his wife's company.  Where it was most pleasing to the king and the
queen to live was at Pontoise, because the king's chamber was above and
the queen's below.  And they had so well arranged matters that they held
their converse on a spiral staircase which led down from the one chamber
to the other.  When the ushers saw the queen-mother coming into the
chamber of the king her son, they knocked upon the door with their
staves, and the king came running into his chamber, so that his mother
might find him there; and so, in turn, did the ushers of Queen
Marguerite's chamber when Queen Blanche came thither, so that she might
find Queen Marguerite there.  One day the king was with the queen his
wife, and she was in great peril of death, for that she had suffered from
a child of which she had been delivered.  Queen Blanche came in, and took
her son by the hand, and said to him, 'Come you away; you are doing no
good here.'  When Queen Marguerite saw that the queen-mother was taking
the king away, she cried, 'Alas! neither dead nor alive will you let me
see my lord; and thereupon she swooned, and it was thought that she was
dead.  The king, who thought she was dying, came back, and with great
pains she was brought round."

Louis gave to his wife consolation and to his mother support.  Amongst
the noblest souls and in the happiest lives there are wounds which cannot
be healed and sorrows which must be borne in silence.

When Louis reached his majority, his entrance upon personal exercise of
the kingly power produced no change in the conduct of public affairs.
There was no vain seeking after innovation on purpose to mark the
accession of a new master, and no reaction in the deeds and words of the
sovereign or in the choice and treatment of his advisers; the kingship of
the son was a continuance of the mother's government.  Louis persisted in
struggling for the preponderance of the crown against the great vassals;
succeeded in taming Peter Mauclerc, the turbulent Count of Brittany;
wrung from Theobald IV., Count of Champagne, the rights of suzerainty in
the countships of Chartres, Blois, and Sancerre, and the viscountship of
Chateaudun, and purchased the fertile countship of Macon from its
possessor.  It was almost always by pacific procedure, by negotiations
ably conducted, and conventions faithfully executed, that he accomplished
these increments of the kingly domain; and when he made war on any of the
great vassals, he engaged therein only on their provocation, to maintain
the rights or honor of his crown, and he used victory with as much
moderation as he had shown before entering upon the struggle.  In 1241,
he was at Poitiers, where his brother Alphonso, the new Count of Poitou,
was to receive, in his presence, the homage of the neighboring lords
whose suzerain he was.  A confidential letter arrived, addressed not to
Louis himself, but to Queen Blanche, whom many faithful subjects
continued to regard as the real regent of the kingdom, and who probably
continued also to have her own private agents.  An inhabitant of
Rochelle, at any rate, wrote to inform the queen-mother that a great
plot was being hatched amongst certain powerful lords, of La Marche,
Saintonge, Angoumois, and perhaps others, to decline doing homage to the
new Count of Poitou, and thus to enter into rebellion against the king
himself.  The news was true, and was given with circumstantial detail.
Hugh de Lusignan, Count of La Marche, and the most considerable amongst
the vassals of the Count of Poitiers, was, if not the prime mover, at any
rate the principal performer in the plot.  His wife, Joan (Isabel) of
Angouleme, widow of the late King of England, John Lackland, and mother
of the reigning king, Henry III., was indignant at the notion of becoming
a vassal of a prince himself a vassal of the King of France, and so
seeing herself--herself but lately a queen, and now a king's widow and a
king's mother--degraded, in France, to a rank below that of the Countess
of Poitiers.  When her husband, the Count of La Marche, went and rejoined
her at Angouleme, he found her giving way alternately to anger and tears,
tears and anger.  "Saw you not," said she, "at Poitiers, where I waited
three days to please your king and his queen, how that when I appeared
before them, in their chamber, the king was seated on one side of the
bed, and the queen, with the Countess of Chartres, and her sister, the