CHAPTER XVII

FRANCE UNDER PHILIP AUGUSTUS AND ST. LOUIS (1180–1270)[32]

Home Policy of Philip Augustus—The Fall of the Angevins and the Conquest of Normandy and Anjou—The Albigensian Crusade—The establishment of Simon of Montfort in Toulouse, and the Reaction under Raymond VII.—The Relations of Philip and his People—Paris—Administrative Reforms—Death and Character of Philip—Reign of Louis VIII.—The Conquest of Poitou and the Renewal of the Albigensian Crusade—The Regency of Blanche of Castille and the Feudal Reaction—The Treaty of Meaux—Character of St. Louis—His Personal Government—The Settlement of the South and West—Battle of Saintes and Treaty of Lorris—Alfonse in Poitou and Toulouse—Charles in Anjou and Provence—Foreign Policy of St. Louis—His Relations to Pope and Emperor—France the Chief Power of Europe—Home Policy of St. Louis—The Administrative System—Baillages and Sénéchaussées—Enquesteurs—The Parliament of Paris—Finance, Coinage, Trade, Towns—Last Years and Death of St. Louis—The Position of France.

We have already dealt with the external history of France up to the time of the battle of Bouvines. We have witnessed Philip Augustus’ early struggles with Henry of Anjou, his participation in the Third Crusade, his matrimonial difficulties, the struggle they involved him in with Innocent III., and the subsequent league between himself and the great Pope which contributed so powerfully towards the abasement of the Guelfs. It remains now to speak of Philip Augustus’ reign as affecting France itself, and to show how, by the defeat and disruption of the Angevin monarchy, the royal domain was enormously extended, how by the identification of the monarchical cause with the orthodox Crusade against the Albigensian heretics the way was paved for the subjection of the Langue d’oc to the Langue d’oil, and how the beginnings of the centralised administration of the monarchy, and the establishment of the first modern capital, increased the power of the French state, even more than Philip’s conquests increased the extent of its dominions. [Sidenote: Home policy of Philip Augustus, 1180–1223.] Under Philip’s son, Louis VIII., and his grandson, Louis IX., the same principles of external growth and internal organisation were still further worked out, so that when the collapse of Frederick II. left vacant the hegemony of Europe, the France of St. Louis was more than ready to step into the place left empty by the fall of the Hohenstaufen.

[Sidenote: The Fall of the Angevins.]

With the return of Philip II. from the Crusade, the interrupted struggle between France and the Angevin monarchy was at once resumed. Despite the advantages which the blundering knight-errantry of Richard I. offered to his more politic antagonist, Philip was not yet in a sufficiently strong position to reap much fruit from his enemy’s mistakes. Richard’s new castle of Chateau Gaillard blocked the way to the invasion of Normandy, and the South was still a strange region to the King of Paris. In 1199 Richard perished in an obscure contest with a petty lord of the Limousin, and Philip at once swooped down on Evreux and conquered it with little difficulty. But very soon Philip’s quarrel with Innocent III. made him glad to accept the proposals of John’s mother, the aged Eleanor of Aquitaine, to revert to his ancient alliance with John. A treaty was signed by which Philip’s son Louis was married to Blanche of Castile, the daughter of King Alfonso VIII. and John’s sister Eleanor. Evreux, with Philip’s other Norman conquests, were made over to the bridegroom as the lady’s marriage portion. Before long, however, the wilful and capricious tyranny of John created a widespread discontent in his French dominions, of which Philip was skilful enough to avail himself to the full. No sooner had the French monarch made a partial peace with the Pope than he listened to the complaints of the barons of Poitou, headed by the indignant Hugh of Lusignan, Count of La Marche, whose betrothed, Isabella, the heiress of Angoulême, had been carried off from him and wedded to the English King. In 1202 Philip summoned John to answer before his suzerain’s court at Paris the complaints of the Poitevin lords. The English King refused to appear, and was sentenced in default to lose all his French fiefs. The murder of Arthur of Brittany still further increased the ill-will felt against John, and the death of Eleanor of Aquitaine soon afterwards deprived him of his wisest counsellor. In the course of 1203–4 Philip gradually conquered all Normandy, and the Norman barons, disgusted at John’s inactivity in defending them, were gradually alienated from his side. Anjou, Touraine, and Maine were won with even less difficulty. [Sidenote: The conquest of Normandy, Anjou, and Poitou.] After Arthur’s death, Brittany passed over from the Angevin to the Capetian obedience, and, after a brief period of French occupation, a new line of Breton began in 1213 with Peter Mauclerc, which, if not very faithful to France, at least acknowledged no other overlord. After Eleanor’s death the personal loyalty of Aquitaine to the house of the Guilhems was greatly relaxed, and before 1213 most of Poitou had passed over to Philip Augustus. It was John’s wish to win back Poitou that led him to interfere actively in the general European struggle that centred round the contest between his nephew Otto and Frederick of Sicily. The victory of Bouvines assured for Philip the permanent domination over Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Touraine, and Poitou. Only the south of Aquitaine remained in the hands of John and his successors. These enormous additions to the monarchy were, for the most part, kept within the royal domain. Their acquisition was the more significant because of the rapidity with which the barons and people of the Angevin dominions accepted the rule of the King of France. Even in England Philip’s triumph produced so little irritation that the opposition to John cheerfully called in his son Louis to be their king in the place of the hated tyrant.[33] Though, after John’s death, Louis was forced in 1217 to return to France and renounce his English throne in favour of the little Henry III., his presence in England, and the long war that preceded and attended it, made impossible any real efforts to win back the Angevin inheritance. [Sidenote: Louis in England. 1215–1217.] The fall of the English power in France first made possible a real French nation united in common obedience to the Capetian monarchs. It was no less vital in fostering a similar national life beyond the Channel. Henceforth England and France were separate and antagonistic though closely inter-related nationalities. Their common destiny, which had begun with the Norman Conquest, was now rudely shattered. The fragments of the Aquitanian heritage that still remained faithful to its English dukes belonged to the feudal and anti-monarchical South. All that England’s kings had once ruled in the Langue d’oil was now transferred to Philip, who became henceforward not only the supreme monarch, but the direct feudal lord of the most vigorous and most patriotic regions that constituted his kingdom.

[Sidenote: Philip II. and the South.]

While Philip was thus conquering the Angevin North, a North-French Crusade was indirectly preparing the way for the direct rule of the Capetian kings over the South. There had long been three chief political and intellectual centres of South French nationality. Two of these, the duchy of Aquitaine and the county of Toulouse [see pp. 90–91], were within the limits of the French kingdom. The third, the county of Provence, was beyond the Rhone, and, as a part of the ancient Arelate, subject to none save the Emperor. It was, however, a sufficiently representative stronghold of Southern ideas for the term Provençal to be used as an equivalent to the tongue and literature of Oc. At these three courts chiefly flourished the subtle and exquisite literature of the Troubadours, whose delicate lyrics first showed the literary capacity of the vernacular Romance tongues, despite the limitations of their subjects, and the rigid fetters of their metric forms. [Sidenote: The Albigensian Heresy and the Troubadours.] The end of the twelfth century, the age of Richard the Lion Heart, of Bertrand of Born, and of Bernard of Ventadour, was the palmiest time in the history of the Troubadours, and the most flourishing period of the brilliant, corrupt, stormy, attractive civilisation of the Languedoc. The heresy, at once social and religious, of the Albigenses [see pp. 216–217], took a deep hold in these wild regions, where the fiercest acts of feudal violence and the hot-house growth of a premature culture stood over-against each other in the strangest contrast. While elsewhere the wild misbelief of the twelfth century easily melted away before the steady influence of the Church, in Languedoc and Provence alone it bade fair to become the faith of a whole people. Toulouse and its neighbourhood were full of open foes of Church and clergy; the barons of the land were either heretics themselves, or favourers of heresy. The clergy were so unpopular that when they went abroad they carefully concealed their tonsure. ‘I had rather be a chaplain,’ became a popular form of speech in cases where a good Christian had been wont to say, ‘I had rather be a Jew.’ ‘If Black Monks,’ wrote the poet Peire Cardinal, ‘may win salvation of God by much eating and by the keeping of women, White Monks by fraud, Templars and Hospitallers by pride, Canons by lending money on usury, then for fools I hold St. Peter and St. Andrew, who suffered for God such grievous torments. Kings, emperors, counts, and knights were wont to rule the world, but now I see clerks holding dominion over it by robbery, deceit, hypocrisy, force, and exhortation.’[34] The freebooting barons took this state of feeling as an excuse for laying violent hands on the property of the Church. Moral excesses, wilder than the ordinary immorality of a brutal age, became widespread. The whole land was filled with the tumult and licence of a premature revolution.

[Sidenote: Raymond VI. of Toulouse.]

Since the absorption of Aquitaine within the Angevin dominions, the court of Toulouse had become more important than ever as a centre of Languedocian life. Raymond VI., the great-grandson of Raymond IV., of Saint Gilles, the hero of the First Crusade, was then Count of Toulouse. He was a prince of wide connections, extensive dominions, and considerable personal capacity. Through his mother, Constance, daughter of Louis VI., he was the first cousin of Philip Augustus. His marriage with Joan of Anjou, the sister of Richard I. and John, had secured him peace with his hereditary foe. He ruled not only over Toulouse and its dependencies; as Duke of Narbonne he was lord of the Rouergue and the great coast region that extended from the frontiers of Roussillon to the right bank of the Rhone; as Marquis of Provence, he ruled over a fertile portion of the Arelate on the left bank of the Rhone, extending farther north than Valence, and including the important town of Avignon. He was a notorious enemy of the clergy, and abettor of heretics, and only less conspicuous in the same policy was his vassal Raymond Roger, Viscount of Béziers. Feeble efforts had long been made by the Church to grapple with the growing heresy, but the only response in Languedoc was fresh murders of priests, and expulsions of bishops from their dioceses, and of abbots from their monasteries. So far back as 1184 Lucius III. had ordered all bishops to make inquiries as to the presence of heretics within their jurisdictions, a step from which the earlier or Episcopal Inquisition first arose. But little was actually effected until the accession of Innocent III. marked the beginning of a more vigorous line of action. In 1198 two Cistercian monks were sent with the position of apostolic legates to win back the Toulousan heretics to the Church. For years they laboured incessantly, wandering and preaching throughout the land, and their unwearied zeal soon led a small band of enthusiasts to join them in their work. Innocent gave further powers to Peter of Castelnau, and Amaury, abbot of Cîteaux. In 1206 accident further associated with them the Spanish canon Dominic (see chapter xviii.), who for ten long years preached with infinite perseverance, but little success, and carefully kept himself free from share in the violent measures that ere long supplemented the legitimate propaganda of orthodoxy.

[Sidenote: Murder of Peter of Castelnau, 1208.]

Peaceful means had availed little to win over the Albigenses. Accident rather than design led Innocent III. to fall back on force as well as persuasion. In 1207 Peter of Castelnau excommunicated Raymond VI. for refusing to restore certain churches on which he had laid violent hands. Like his father-in-law against Becket, Raymond spoke sharp words against the meddlesome priest, and one of his knights, taking him at his word, went to Saint-Gilles and murdered the legate in January 1208. This deed of blood was soon amply avenged. Innocent III. deposed Raymond and preached a Crusade against him and his heretic subjects, whom he pronounced worse than Saracens. A twenty years’ struggle then began in the South, which did not end until Languedoc lay ruined and helpless at the mercy of the North.

[Sidenote: The Albigensian Crusade and Simon de Montfort.]

A swarm of North French warriors took the cross in obedience to the papal appeal, though Philip Augustus prudently withheld from the whole movement. Some of the greatest of his feudatories, including the Duke of Burgundy, were there, while among the lesser lords, the unbending will and fierce religious zeal of Simon, Count of Montfort, soon gave him the claim for the first position among the leaders of the holy war, though Abbot Amaury of Cîteaux, the Pope’s legate, directed the policy of the whole expedition. Raymond quailed before the storm. He submitted himself absolutely to the legate, paid a severe penance for his crime before the abbey church of Saint-Gilles, surrendered his castles, and promised to chastise the heretics that he had favoured. In June 1209 he was absolved, and suffered to take the cross against his own subjects.

Raymond Roger of Béziers scorned to share in his overlord’s submission. The full fury of the Crusaders was turned against him, and after fearful bloodshed his dominions were overrun. After two refusals from greater lords, the legate prevailed upon Simon of Montfort to accept the territory of the heretic viscount, which the Pope had pronounced forfeited. The Crusaders now went home, and the second act of the long struggle began when Montfort began to govern the dominions which his good sword and papal favour had won for him.

After the return of the Northern armies, the cowed Southerners again plucked up courage, and Montfort soon found that he had to hold Béziers and Carcassonne against the hostility of a whole people. The war now assumed a political as well as a religious character, for Simon was resisted not only by reason of his orthodoxy, but as a Northern interloper who had made religious zeal a pretext for personal aggrandisement. Before long Raymond VI. forgot his humiliation, and gain took arms. As the result, a second Crusade was proclaimed in 1211, and once more the South was deluged in blood. [Sidenote: Peter of Aragon and the battle of Muret, 1213.] Peter II. of Aragon, a famous Crusader beyond the Pyrenees, at last proposed his mediation, but so strongly did the lust for Southern estates sharpen the religious zeal of the army of the Church that, though Innocent III. was willing to accept his offers, the French themselves insisted on continuing the Crusade. Irritated at the rejection of his offer, Peter himself intervened on behalf of the Count of Toulouse, but in 1213 he lost his army and his life at the battle of Muret, where Montfort’s clever tactics won a decided victory. This settled the fate of the South. Raymond VI. abandoned Toulouse, and was glad to save his life by another abject submission. [Sidenote: Simon de Montfort, Count of Toulouse.] Simon de Montfort became Count of Toulouse and Duke of Narbonne. He divided his new territories amongst Northern lords who stipulated to follow the ‘customs of France,’ that is, of their own homes. It was even a favour that some of the less guilty vassals, such as the Counts of Foix and Comminges, were allowed, at the price of a complete humiliation, to receive back their lands as his subjects. As a still greater favour a mere fragment of Toulouse and the imperial marquisate of Provence were conferred on Raymond VII., the son of the deposed Count, who was glad to abdicate in his favour. In the midst of the storms of war, the heresy of the Albigenses was slowly stamped out, and with it perished all that was most distinctive of Languedocian civilisation. The stern, brutal, effective rule of the Northern Count prepared the way for direct royal government. The dependence of the South on the North had begun.

As the struggle proceeded, Philip Augustus gradually departed from his careful policy of non-intervention. In 1213 he allowed his son Louis to take the cross, and helped Montfort to destroy the feudal castles of the South. Philip himself willingly invested Simon with the fief which his sword had won. But in a very few years Raymond VII. strove to win back for the house of Saint-Gilles its ancient position, and the Languedoc rose enthusiastically in his favour. The younger Raymond was as orthodox as Montfort, and under his influence the struggle became a mere political contest. As such it waged with varying fortunes for more than thirteen years. [Sidenote: The Languedocian reaction, Amaury de Montfort, and Raymond VII.] Simon was slain in 1218 as he strove to storm revolted Toulouse, and his eldest son, Amaury, who had few of his great gifts, was soon hard pressed by the triumphant Raymond. In 1219 Louis of France again led a Crusade in his favour. The death of the suspected Raymond VI. in 1222 was a further advantage to the Southern cause. Amaury soon saw that his chances were hopeless. When the French king died in 1223, Amaury had already offered to resign his claims in favour of his suzerain.

Thus Philip Augustus by force and cunning made France a great State. There was no longer any vassal of the crown whose power overshadowed that of his sovereign, and the strongest feudatories of the monarchy now found it prudent to be on good terms with their mighty overlord. To them Philip was courteous and friendly. He had so much work to do in absorbing his conquests that he might well leave his vassals a good deal to themselves. [Sidenote: Philip II.’s dealings with barons, clergy, and towns.] Yet he never neglected an opportunity for extending his power, and systematically strove to establish direct relations with all the tenants of his vassals whom he could draw within his reach. Over his own tenants he exercised a constant and watchful superintendence. By the perfection of the administration of his domains, and by the gradual extension of the sphere of the royal courts, he was able to pose as the protector of peace, the friend of the poor, and the champion of the independence and integrity of the nation. The humiliated feudalists took his pay and fought his battles. The conciliated clergy glorified his liberality and piety. Yet all his friendship with Pope and prelates did not prevent Philip from keeping a tight hand over the great dignitaries of the Church. He forced the prelates to pay their full share of suit and service. He strove to minimise the constant interference of the papal authority, even when his interests and his principles forbade him to openly set himself against it. He was a good friend to the townsmen. He felt himself so strong that he could abandon the feeble and tentative policy of his predecessors, and boldly strike an alliance with the communes, though still discouraging the more revolutionary aspects of the communal movement. He was thus able to put even cities outside his domain under the royal protection. Nor did he content himself with giving towns charters of liberties. He loved to strengthen their fortifications, rebuild their walls, encourage their industries, and protect their commerce. He encouraged foreign merchants to attend French markets and purchase French goods. [Sidenote: Growth of Paris.] Under his fostering care Paris, already a great city, became the first modern capital of a centralised national state. He built a strong wall, taking in the schools of the south bank of the Seine, the royal residence and the cathedral in the island city, and the busy town of merchants and manufactures that was soon to make the north bank of the Seine the largest district of the capital. He ordered that the whole city should be paved with hard and firm stones. In his days the University of Paris received its first royal charters of privilege. Under him a crowd of fair buildings, conspicuous among them the cathedral of the capital, grew up in that new Gothic style that was soon to spread from the Isle of France all over the Western world. As the seat of the most famous schools north of the Alps, as the centre of the only centralised continental monarchy, and as the special haunt of the traders of Northern Gaul, Paris now took a unique place, not only among French towns, but among the cities of Western Europe.

[Sidenote: Philip’s administrative reforms.]

Philip was a soldier and diplomatist rather than an administrator or a legislator. His mission was to endow the monarchy with adequate force rather than to organise it or to govern it after new fashions. Yet the circumstances of his position compelled him to make new departures in the administrative history of France, and thus to lay the foundation of the system which was perfected by his famous grandson. The burdens thrown upon the royal court were now such that they could no longer be adequately discharged by casual assemblies of ignorant feudalists. The delicate functions of the chief officers of state could no longer be put into the hands of the baron in whose hands happened to lie the hereditary sergeanty. Hence, under Philip, we observe a further specialisation of an official class of knights and clerks whose skill and training could supplement the haphazard and uncertain services of the great barons. The system of administration that was enough for the scanty domains of his predecessors would have broken down under the responsibilities involved by the conquest of Normandy and Anjou, had not Philip, before his departure for the Crusade, constituted a new class of royal officials called _baillis_, who were to act as supervisors and directors of the feudal provosts who had hitherto administered the royal domain. Each bailli took charge of a large area of territory, within which he held monthly assizes to render justice in the king’s name to all his subjects. From time to time he appeared at Paris, where he handed in an account of their administration, and paid into the exchequer the sums levied by him in his provinces. But the growth of the royal revenue was hardly commensurate with the increased strain on it, and Philip found that success rather added to than diminished his difficulties. [Sidenote: Character of Philip Augustus.] He was a hot-tempered, strong, and active man, ‘easy to anger and easy to appease,’ whose boisterous joviality, free living, and robust, vigorous temperament did something to make him popular, but whose complete personal impression it is hard to grasp, even in the scanty measure in which it is safe to individualise the shadowy statesmen of the Middle Ages. In his sudden gusts of passion he could be pitilessly cruel, but he was more commonly to be condemned for his violence, his cunning, and his unscrupulous way of overreaching his enemies. Yet his panegyrist could say of him that he ‘loved justice as his own mother, strove to exact mercy above judgment; was ever a follower of the truth, and surpassed all kings in conjugal chastity.’ Such statements show that the contemporary standard was not very high. But even after time had soured Philip’s temper and brutalised his passions, he still laboured manfully to the last. He was the first French king whose power was so firmly established that there was no need for him to crown his son king in his own lifetime. He was almost the only king of his age whose son worked faithfully and ungrudgingly in his service, and was content to bide the time when nature should call him to his father’s kingdom.

[Sidenote: Louis VIII., 1223–1226.]

Philip II.’s successor was already six-and-thirty years of age, a tried soldier, a successful statesman, and a man whose private virtues far outshone those of his father, though he was much less able. Louis VIII.’s weak health and cold disposition made him the very opposite of Philip. His piety, his chastity, his love of truth and justice, were certain. Despite his poor physique, his personal prowess gave him the surname of the Lion. He had been long schooled in the execution of his father’s policy, and as king he had no wish but to carry it out still further. Louis’ short reign of three years is therefore but a continuation of the reign of Philip Augustus. His simple mission was to gather the fruits of his predecessor’s labours. His whole reign was occupied in turning to the profit of the crown the results of the collapse of the Angevin power and of the triumph of the Albigensian Crusade.

Despite the earlier conquests of Philip and Louis, the authority of the crown was still but partially established over Poitou. Hugh of Lusignan, though now step-father of the little Henry III., still played a treacherous and ambiguous game, and for the moment again declared himself on the French side. [Sidenote: The Conquest of Poitou.] Louis assembled a great army at Tours and led it on a triumphant progress from the Loire to the Dordogne. The regents of the English king did little but enter into ineffective negotiations. Louis meanwhile took Niort, Saint Jean d’Angely, and La Rochelle, after which the barons of the Limousin, Saintonge, and Périgord made their submission to him. ‘Save the Gascons, who dwell beyond the Garonne,’ boasted a French chronicler, ‘all the princes of Aquitaine now promised fealty to King Louis, and then he went back to France.’

The renewal of the Albigensian Crusade now called Louis to the South. Amaury de Montfort had already fled from his heritage, and had vainly implored the help of Philip Augustus. Louis VIII. now showed the fugitive greater consideration than his father had done. He had already fought as a Crusader against the Southern heretics. His piety was kindled by the renewed appeals of the legate of Honorius III., while the helplessness of Amaury indicated that the results of success were bound to fall to the crown. Early in 1226 Louis again took the cross, and Raymond VII. was again excommunicated and deposed. Amaury abdicated his rights in favour of the king. The clergy provided funds, and the Catholic chivalry of the North soon flocked to the crusading banners.

[Sidenote: The revival of the Albigensian Crusade.]

In the early summer of 1226, Louis with his Crusaders marched southwards down the Rhone valley, overrunning the marquisate of Provence. He met no opposition until he approached Avignon, a city long known to be a hotbed of heresy. The townsmen refused him a passage over the Rhone, and it was therefore necessary to conquer the city before Languedoc could be entered. After an obstinate struggle Avignon was captured, and Louis continued his triumphal march up to the gates of Toulouse. But the crusading army broke up before the capital of Raymond had surrendered. The barons were tired of the long and weary marches, and sickness had devastated the host. Louis himself was prostrated by sickness, and after providing for the administration of his conquests hurried back to the North. He had only reached Auvergne when he was carried off by a deadly fever. He had done enough for the monarchy by the great march which had first brought home to the Languedoc the majesty of the Capetian king.

[Sidenote: The Regency of Blanche of Castile and the feudal reaction, 1226–1235.]

A severe feudal reaction followed the unexpected death of Louis VIII. He had left a numerous family by Blanche of Castile, but the eldest child, who was crowned Louis IX. within three weeks of his father’s death, was only twelve years of age, and it required all the skill and courage of his mother to preserve for him even the semblance of authority. The dispositions of her husband’s will did not make matters any better. Breaking with the tradition of the early Capetians, Louis VIII. assigned by his testament a large territorial appanage to each of his younger children. Great slices were to be cut out of the royal domain that Robert the second son might be Count of Artois, Alfonse the third Count of Poitou, and Charles the youngest Count of Anjou and Maine. A new race of feudal potentates was thus supplied from the bosom of the royal house itself. The error involved in such a policy is one of the commonplaces of history, and for the next two centuries the hostility to the crown of younger branches of the Capetian family was often to prove almost as formidable as that of the ancient separatist seigneurs. But the fault of Louis has perhaps been unduly censured. Neither the resources of a mediæval monarch, nor the conditions of the time, made it possible for the king to permanently appropriate to himself an indefinite extent of domain, nor to deprive his kinsmen of the state due to their exalted birth. If the policy of Louis lost Artois to France for many centuries, it made it possible for Alfonse and Charles to act as the most efficient pioneers of the Capetian monarchy in the South. The rule of a royal prince over his appanage was often the best transition from pure independence towards complete incorporation with the monarchy.

A great feudal coalition soon formed against Blanche of Castile. She was a foreigner, haughty and unsympathetic, and strong enough to excite fierce personal antipathy. ‘A woman in sex she was,’ says Matthew Paris, ‘a man in counsel, worthy to be compared with Semiramis.’ The younger members of the royal house, headed by Philip Hurepel, Count of Boulogne, the legitimised son of Philip II. and Agnes of Meran, joined with his kinsman Peter Mauclerc of Brittany, whose skill and courage soon made him the head of the league. The persecuted Raymond of Toulouse plucked up courage to unite himself with the coalition. Hugh of La Marche deserted the falling cause of royalty, and again became friendly with his step-son, Henry of England, who saw in the distress of the young king a chance of winning back his lost territories in France. Theobald IV. of Champagne, alone of the great feudatories, remained faithful to the royal cause.

The barons demanded the reversal of the policy of the last two reigns, and the restitution of their ancient rights. What power they were willing to leave the crown was to be placed in the hands of Philip of Boulogne, and the Spanish queen was to be sent back to her native country. Blanche did not quail before the storm. She appealed from the barons to the clergy and people. She secured the neutrality of Frederick II., and the open support of Honorius III. By the rapidity and unity of her movements she sought to break up the unwieldy and disorganised levies of her opponents. When she could no longer hold her own in the Isle of France, she went with her young son to Troyes, and threw herself on the protection of the Count of Champagne. Having failed in the first great blow, the feudal coalition slowly dissolved. It kept France in a state of anarchy for several years, but it was not strong enough to do more. Peter of Brittany strove hard to get English support, but it was not until 1230 that the young Henry III. came to France, and then, after an abortive march through Poitou, the English went home again, and the feudalists were as far from success as ever. Next year Peter failed in an intrigue to win over Theobald of Champagne to his side. He finally strove to stir up a revolt against Theobald in favour of Alice, queen of Cyprus, the daughter of Theobald’s uncle, Henry, king of Jerusalem. But this also failed, and the queen of Cyprus renounced her claims. In 1234 Theobald attained the climax of his power by succeeding to the kingdom of Navarre as the heir of his uncle Sancho. Philip of Boulogne was dead. Peter of Brittany sullenly made his peace with the triumphant Castilian. The monarchy of Philip Augustus had proved strong enough to survive a minority and the rule of a foreign woman.

[Sidenote: The Treaty of Meaux and the extension of the royal domain to the Mediterranean, 1229.]

A notable result of the triumph of the crown was the settlement of the question of Toulouse by a compromise that was all in favour of the monarchy. The Albigensian Crusade had died away amid the storms of civil war, and against so orthodox a prince as Raymond VII. it had never been more than a sorry pretext for aggression. In 1229 Raymond concluded the Treaty of Meaux with the regent, by which he retained, though on humiliating conditions, a portion of his sovereignty. He yielded up to the crown the duchy of Narbonne, the eastern part of his dominions, from the Rhone to beyond Carcassonne, and was confirmed in his possession of the county of Toulouse. He was, however, to rase the walls of his capital and thirty other towns, to admit a royal garrison into the castle of Toulouse, to wage war against the heretics, to provide orthodox doctors to teach the true faith at Toulouse, and go on pilgrimage to Palestine. He was to marry his daughter and heiress to Blanche’s younger son Alfonse, and so secure to the Capetians the ultimate succession to all his dominions. Another result of the treaty was the organisation of a systematic effort to stamp out the last remnants of the Albigensian heresy. [Sidenote: The Inquisition.] Immediately after the treaty a systematic Episcopal Inquisition, such as Lucius III. had contemplated in 1184, was set up in every diocese of Languedoc. In 1233 it was supplemented by a Papal Inquisition, established by Gregory IX. This latter gave unity to persecution by overstepping the rigid diocesan limits. Its direction was given to the followers of the same Dominic who had preached so long in vain in Toulouse. But Gregory did not put his whole trust in the fires of the inquisitors. At the same time that he created their grim tribunal, he established the University of Toulouse, the first _studium generale_ set up by papal bull, and thus gave wider currency to the orthodox teaching which the care of Honorius had already established there. The faculty of theology passed at once into Dominican hands, and the orthodox dialectic of the schoolmen soon replaced the lay and lax culture of the troubadours. Only in the county of Provence did the troubadours still continue their songs. The independence of the South was at an end, and the royal domain for the first time touched the Mediterranean. But the greater sympathy now shown for the Southern people came out in the reversal of Montfort’s rude efforts to introduce the customs of the North.

[Sidenote: Character of St. Louis.]

Louis IX.’s personal government began in 1235, when his mother laid down the regency in his favour. Though nurtured amidst the storms of rebellion, and exposed to all the temptations of one who was a king from early boyhood, Blanche had so carefully provided for his education that his simple, just, and straightforward disposition was allowed full scope for its development. He early became an example of piety to all his realm. He regularly frequented the canonical hours of the Church, rising from his bed, like a monk, to attend matins at midnight, and again in the early morning for prime. His fasts, his discipline, his rigid self-denial, were beyond all ordinary measure. The length of his private devotions exhausted the patience of his nobles, and even wearied his confessor; but he told the barons that they wasted more time every day in gambling and hunting, and shame compelled them to be silent. His devotion was not merely one of outward forms. His fervent and exalted piety shone through every action of his simple and well-ordered life. He was the soul of honour and chastity. He ate and drank very sparingly, always mixing his wine with water, and consuming whatever meats happened to be set before him. Though on solemn occasions he was clad in gold and rich stuffs, his ordinary garments were of simple cut and sober colour. He detested oaths, violent and impure speech, idle gossip, lies, and tale-bearing. His patience was unending, and his good temper unruffled. His humility was extreme and quite without ostentation. His charity was immense and unbounded. He was not only a great giver of alms and founder of churches, monasteries, and hospitals. He daily fed the poor at his table, and visited the sick and wretched at their own abodes. He washed the feet of repulsive beggars and cripples. He did not shrink from contact with the lepers. His simple enthusiasm for good works powerfully affected the rough barons with whom he was brought into contact. ‘To see or hear him,’ we are told, ‘brought comfort and calm to the most troubled spirit.’

With all his piety and simplicity, there was nothing weak or puerile in Louis’ character. His extreme asceticism had no touch of the gloomy moroseness or inhumanity of the baser type of mediæval devotees. His habits were as robust, as manly, as they were simple. He enjoyed vigorous health. His tall, well-knit frame, bright, keen eye, fair flowing hair, and good-humoured blonde face, made him the model of a high-born knight. Not, perhaps, endowed with any high measure of intellectual capacity, he had a firm will, a sane judgment, a shrewd sense of his own limitations, and the strong common-sense that makes a good man of affairs. He was pleasant and easy of access, delighting in unrestrained intercourse with his friends, and reckless of the etiquette and ceremony that were beginning to hedge even a feudal court. With all his ambition to live a ‘regular’ life, he did not scorn the married state nor neglect the softer domestic virtues, and his love for his children caused him early to abandon a hope he at one time entertained of entering a monastery. As a young man he delighted in the chase, in well-trained hawks and high-mettled horses, and could entertain his barons with sumptuous and regal hospitality. He was one of the bravest of soldiers, preserving a rare coolness in the fierce hand-to-hand struggle of a mediæval battle, and never losing hope or cheerfulness. He was as good a king as he was a man, tenacious of all royal rights that had been handed down from his forefathers, and constantly striving to uphold his authority as the best guarantee of the peace and prosperity of his people. He made his own the policy of his grandfather, though in his hands it lost its original taint of fraud and violence. He was the friend of the clerk, the friar, the monk, the simple knight, and the burgess. He depressed the great feudalists the more completely since he was scrupulous to allow them every power that law or custom recognised to be theirs. He enlarged his dominions the more securely since his scrupulous conscience forbade him taking unfair advantage even of his enemy. He could withstand the aggressions of a greedy pope or a self-seeking bishop the more effectively since his devotion to the Church and his zeal for her just rights were patent to all men. He could build up a new administrative system adequate for the government of his vast realm since it was common fame that his motive was not self-aggrandisement, but the well-being of his whole people. As a Christian and as a man, as a statesman and as a warrior, he was the exemplar of all that was best in his age. After his death he was raised to the honours of sanctity, and subsequent ages have revered in St. Louis the very ideal of a loyal knight and Christian king.

[Sidenote: The settlement of the South-west.]

The first care for the young king was the completion of the conquest of the South-west. His way had already been made smooth for him. Raymond of Toulouse, curbed by the Dominicans and the French garrison, was no longer dangerous, and the greater part of his old dominions were ruled by the royal seneschals of Beaucaire and Carcassonne. In 1237 his heiress Joan was married to Louis’s brother, Alfonse, who, on his father-in-law’s death, was thus destined to become Count of Toulouse.

Though Alfonse was thus nobly provided for, Louis’ strict fidelity to his father’s will conferred upon him and his brothers the rich appanages which the previous king had bequeathed to them in their cradles. In 1241 he held a great court at Saumur, where, clad in blue satin and red mantle lined with ermine, he royally feasted with the chief barons of France in the noble hall built by Henry of Anjou. [Sidenote: Alfonse, Count of Poitou and Auvergne, 1241.] There he made Alfonse a knight, and afterwards, taking him to Poitiers, invested him with the counties of Poitiers and Auvergne. For the moment all was well. Hugh of Lusignan had banqueted at Saumur, and had sworn fealty to Alfonse at Poitiers. But before long his wife, the former queen of England, stirred him up to resist his liege lord and fall back upon his ancient alliance with his step-son. The Poitevin barons met at Parthenay, eager to oppose the crown. ‘The French,’ they declared, ‘have always hated the Poitevins, and will always continue to do so. They would fain trample us under their feet, and use us more contemptuously than the Normans or the Albigeois. In Champagne and Burgundy the king’s servants carry all before them, and the nobles dare do nothing without their leave. We had better die than live such a slavish life.’ A league was soon formed; the English seneschal of Bordeaux sent immediate help. Even Raymond of Toulouse ventured to revolt, and his subjects murdered inquisitors and chased away the Dominican theologians of the University. All the old spirits of disorder were aroused, and in 1242 Henry of England landed in Saintonge with a considerable army, joyfully profiting by the opportunity to vindicate his ancient claims to Poitou.

[Sidenote: Battle of Saintes, and final defeat of the English and Poitevins, 1242.]

Louis IX. was now forced to appear at the head of an army in the South. In a short, one-sided campaign he carried all before him. He secured the passage of the Charente by driving the Anglo-Poitevin host from the bridge of Taillebourg, and on 22nd July won a decisive victory outside the walls of Saintes. He pressed on to Blaye on the Gironde, where a sudden sickness alone prevented him from crossing over to the siege of Bordeaux. But he had gained all that he sought. Hugh of La Marche made a humiliating submission, and his sons sought a freer and more adventurous career with their half-brother in England. The Count of Toulouse yielded before the seneschal of Carcassonne in time to avert a new Crusade. [Sidenote: The Treaty of Lorris, and the final humiliation of Raymond VII., 1243.] In 1243 the Peace of Lorris renewed the humiliating conditions of the Treaty of Meaux. ‘Henceforth,’ says William of Nangis, ‘the barons no longer attempt to do anything against their king, the Lord’s anointed, seeing clearly that the hand of the Lord was with him.’

[Sidenote: Alfonse of Poitiers, Count of Toulouse, 1249.]

Nothing now remained but to gather up the spoils. The careful administration of Alfonse at Poitiers prepared the way for the direct absorption of the lands between Loire and Garonne within the royal domain. In 1249 the beaten Raymond VII. died, and his son-in-law quietly succeeded to his heritage. Northern laws and manners gradually permeated the South. The improvements of administration which St. Louis had established in his domain were adopted by his intelligent brother. A single parliament or high law court was created for all Alfonse’s fiefs, and the South for the first time felt the advantages of law and order. The Langue d’oc receded before the new court tongue of the Langue d’oil. ‘Bastides’ and ‘Villeneuves’ were set up as new centres of trade and to diminish the importance and prosperity of the older separatist towns.[35] Vast castles of the northern type kept down the disobedient. Gothic minsters, like the cathedral of Limoges and the choir of Toulouse, were reared by North French workmen side by side with the indigenous Romanesque that had lingered as long in the South as in the Rhineland. When Alfonse died without heirs in 1271, his counties of Toulouse and Poitiers and his land of Auvergne quietly devolved on his nephew Philip III.

There still remained the danger of the English dukes of Gascony, but Henry III. was now Louis’ good friend and brother-in-law, and too occupied in quarrels with his subjects to concern himself overmuch with the affairs of Aquitaine. Henry remained, however, tenacious of his rights, and the vigorous rule of his brother-in-law, Simon of Montfort, the younger,[36] showed what a source of strength Aquitaine might become in competent hands. Here St. Louis’ moderation and sense of justice stood him in good stead, and led him to make one of the greatest sacrifices ever made by a strong king in the interests of peace. [Sidenote: The Treaty of Paris and the settlement with Henry III., 1259.] He persuaded the English king to yield up his vain claims on Normandy and Anjou in return for the cession of considerable districts in the South, long conquered and quietly ruled by Louis’ seneschals. He yielded at the moment ‘all the rights which he had in the three bishoprics of Limoges, Cahors, and Périgueux, in fiefs and in domains,’ that is to say, the homages of the barons of those regions, for Louis’ domains there were insignificant. He also promised on the death of Alfonse, to yield to Henry Saintonge south of the Charente, the Agenais, and lower Quercy. The treaty was drawn up at Abbeville in 1258 and finally sealed at Paris in the following year. It was the last act in the long struggle for Normandy and Poitou, the legal limitation of the English kings’ land in France to a small fragment of their Aquitanian heritage. The good faith of St. Louis was not strictly followed by his successor, and Edward I. found some difficulty in obtaining the cessions promised on Alfonse’s death. At last, in the treaty of Amiens, 1279, matters were compromised by the cession of the Agenais.[37] Future disputes between the French kings and the Aquitanian dukes were in due course to arise, but they turned on fresh questions. The loyalty of St. Louis had entirely ended the ancient grounds of dispute between overlord and vassal.

[Sidenote: The King and the northern feudalists. Appanages of the royal house.]

No overwhelming growth of the royal domain in Northern France marked the reign of Louis, but the vast acquisitions of Philip II. were quietly absorbed, and their inhabitants became good Frenchmen. Four fiefs of the first order now alone remained in the north, and only two of these—Flanders and Brittany—retained a separatist character. Despite their extension of power over the Pyrenees, the house of Blois-Champagne was ever friendly to Louis, and his purchase of Macon had kept Burgundy in check. No great harm to the central power followed, when in 1237 Louis made his brother Robert Count of Artois, and in 1245 his youngest brother Charles became Count of Anjou and Maine, especially as, in the latter case, Touraine, the ancient dependency of Anjou, was retained within the royal domain. At the later date Louis also granted appanages to his younger sons, Peter becoming Count of Alençon, and Robert Count of Clermont-en-Beauvaisis. But the subsequent marriage of Robert to the heir of Bourbon brought another great fief under the control of the royal house. Charles’s early government of Anjou was vigorous and successful, and did something to reconcile the ancient county to its practical loss of independence. But Charles soon found a better sphere for his energies in the imperial lands adjacent to the French kingdom. He strove for a time to establish himself in the county of Hainault, as the ally of Margaret of Flanders. He finally found a more fruitful field in the Arelate, where he proved a worthy brother to Alfonse of Poitiers, as the precursor of Northern influence over the South.

[Sidenote: Provence under Raymond Berengar V.]

The fall of Toulouse left the county of Provence the one great centre of the South French national spirit. Though technically no part of the French kingdom, it was one in language, manners, and sympathies with the county of Toulouse, whose princes had indeed acquired possession of the so-called March of Provence, between the Durance and the Isère. So long as the Languedocian civilisation was strong, the hereditary animosities of the Counts of Provence and the Counts of Toulouse did much to weaken the political cohesion of two kindred peoples. In the face of the wave of Northern aggression, signs were not wanting that the ancient feuds of the courts of Aix and Toulouse were abating. Raymond Berengar V. had been Count of Provence since 1209. By his marriage with Beatrix, daughter of Thomas, Count of Savoy, he had established a close union with the active and aggressive house that was beginning to make itself a formidable power in the upper region of the ancient Arelate. But four daughters only were the offspring of the union, and were not some special precautions taken there was the danger lest Raymond Berengar should be the last of his race to rule in Provence. [Sidenote: Marriages of his daughters.] The astute Provençal looked out early for wealthy husbands for his daughters. The eldest, Margaret, became the wife of St. Louis himself in 1234. Two years later Eleanor, the second, was wedded to Henry III. of England. The third, Sanchia, was espoused in 1244 to Richard earl of Cornwall, the future King of the Romans. The youngest, Beatrice, was the destined heiress of Provence, and everything depended upon her choice of a husband. During the crisis of the struggle in the south-west, Raymond VII. repudiated his Spanish wife and became a suitor for the hand of Beatrice. Had such a union been accomplished, it would have been easy to cheat Alfonse of Poitiers of the Toulouse succession, and a brilliant prospect was opened out of a great national state in southern Gaul, formed by the union of Toulouse and Provence, which would have surrounded the royal Sénéchaussées of Beaucaire and Carcassonne, and might well have proved strong enough to ward off the aggressions of the northerners. But with the collapse of the English power at Saintes and the submission of Raymond at Lorris, this glowing vision vanished for ever. It was too late in the day to stem the tide that had already overflowed. Raymond Berengar died in 1245, and soon after the marriage of Beatrice to Charles of Anjou established a Northern court at Aix as well as at Poitiers.

[Sidenote: Charles of Anjou, Count of Provence, 1245–1265.]

For the next twenty years (1245–1265) Charles of Anjou carried on in Provence the same work that Alfonse had long been doing at Poitiers and was soon to begin at Toulouse. The ablest, strongest, fiercest, and most unscrupulous of the sons of Louis VIII., the new Count of Provence thoroughly established Northern methods of government and Northern ideals of life in the last home of the civilisation of the Troubadours. Charles’s success was brilliant and lasting. The great churchmen, like the archbishop of Arles, ceased to be temporal sovereigns. The feudal nobles lost their independence when their leader, Barral des Baux, despairing of holding his rock-built stronghold against his suzerain, gave up his pursuit of feudal freedom and became one of Charles’s most trusted ministers. The cities, which had hitherto vied with their Italian neighbours in their love of absolute autonomy, saw their municipal franchises destroyed when revolted Marseilles was starved into submission, while the care Charles showed for its commercial interests soon did something to reconcile the wealthy citizens to the loss of their liberties. Master of every order of his subjects, Charles welded all Provence together by the skilful execution of good laws. As a result of his careful policy, he was gradually able to dispense with his Northern followers and intrust administration and arms to his Provençal subjects. The last of the Troubadours fled to the more congenial courts of Aragon and northern Italy. The successes of Charles began that long series of French aggressions on the Arelate, which only ceased when Savoy itself became French less than forty years ago. This was the natural and inevitable result of the development of the idea of nationality and the decay of the imperial principle. As the Provençal lands could not form a national state of their own, they ultimately found their salvation in incorporation with the more vigorous nationality of the Langue d’oil.

[Sidenote: Foreign Policy of St. Louis.]

The foreign policy of St. Louis was inspired by the same spirit of justice and peace that regulated his dealings with his feudatories. We have seen his watchful care of the just rights of the English king. His Treaty of Corbeil of 1258, with James I., king of Aragon, was based on the same principles as the Treaty of Paris with Henry III. [Sidenote: His relations to Spain.] By it Louis renounced all rights over the county of Barcelona, in return for James’s abandonment of his claims over Foix and all lands north of Roussillon. By an almost nominal concession, Louis thus broke the close tie between the kindred civilisations north and south of the Pyrenees which, in the days of the Albigensian Wars, had threatened to counterbalance the growing influence of the French crown over the south. By the marriage of Louis’s eldest son, Philip, to James’s daughter, Isabella of Aragon, the personal tie between the two realms was made the stronger. Two daughters of Louis were wedded to Spanish princes, one to the son of the king of Castile, another to Theobald the Young, king of Navarre and count of Champagne. Even the establishment of the most faithful of the great feudatories in the little kingdom of Navarre helped, rather than hindered, the progress of the French monarchy. The Champenois Joinville became the most attached follower, the most enthusiastic biographer of St. Louis.

[Sidenote: Louis and the Empire.]

The long quarrel of Papacy and Empire gave ample opportunities for an ambitious prince to draw profit to France from their dissensions. The anti-clerical policy of Frederick II. afforded plenty of pretexts to so pious a king as Louis for putting himself on the papal side and making what annexations he could at the expense of Frederick’s weakness. But though troubled by the Emperor’s ecclesiastical attitude, Louis did not forget Frederick’s forbearance in the days when Blanche of Castile was struggling single-handed against the feudal party, and he was by no means satisfied with the rancorous attitude of the Papacy. He therefore strove to take up a strict neutrality between Pope and Emperor. He rejected the offer of the imperial crown which Gregory IX. made to Robert of Artois. He refused to receive Innocent IV. when he fled from Italy, and disregarded the deposition of the Emperor at Lyons. He strove hard at Cluny to reconcile Innocent and Frederick. The only occasion when he prepared to uphold the Pope was when it was believed that Frederick was crossing Mont Cenis with a great army in full march for Lyons. This judicious policy was especially pursued by him since he realised that the essential condition of a new Crusade was the friendship of Cæsar and the Pope. When the last chances of reconciliation were ended, he went, in 1248, to Egypt, to fight single-handed for the cause which he had at heart. On his return in 1254, he found Frederick dead and the Empire as good as destroyed. Yet during the weary years of the Great Interregnum, he never, as we shall see, departed from the ancient strictness of his policy. He had no wish that his brother-in-law, Richard of Cornwall, should revive the ancient alliance of England and Germany. He preferred to recognise Alfonso of Castile, but he took no direct action to sustain his preference. The position of Richard in Germany removed his last scruples about the Sicilian inheritance. He allowed Charles of Anjou to accept in 1265 the Sicilian throne, and marred his later policy by his undue deference to his unscrupulous brother. The deviation of the Crusade of 1270 to Tunis was the result of Charles’s wish to strengthen his Italian position. Louis’s death was thus in a measure due to the influence of the prince who had become the evil spirit of the French royal house.

[Sidenote: France the chief Power of Europe.]

Towards the end of his reign Louis was incontestably the first prince of Europe. The collapse of the Hohenstaufen, the weakness of his English brother-in-law, the position of his own brethren in the South and in Italy; the degradation of the feudatories, all contributed to make the power of Louis great, but the unique position which the French monarch now held was due not so much to his authority and resources as to the ascendency won by his personal character and virtues. His reputation for impartiality and his recognised love of peace and justice made him the natural arbiter in every delicate question, the general peace-maker in every European quarrel. Louis’s arbitration between Henry III. and his barons, if the least successful of his interventions, was but one example of his activity in this direction, both with regard to foreign princes and his own feudatories. It was too much to expect that even the best of kings would decide otherwise than in favour of a brother monarch against an aristocracy whose avowed object was the transference of the royal authority to a committee of barons. It speaks strongly for Louis that the English barons should ever have consented to submit to his decision.

[Sidenote: Home Policy of St. Louis.]

The internal government of Louis IX. must now be considered. His attitude towards the feudal barons has been already illustrated. The narrowness of his vision and the justness of his character combined to make it impossible for him to adopt an anti-feudal policy like that of his grandson, Philip the Fair. He was the defender of all existing lawful authority, but if he intervened to protect the oppressed barons from the zeal of his too active officials, he more often used his influence to make the barons exercise towards their dependants the same rigid justice he was ever willing to manifest to them. His forbidding of private war, the judicial duel, and the tournaments which were often little better than thinly disguised war, were the result of his love of peace and order; but they cut at the root of feudal ideas, with which indeed any real measure of peace and order were almost incompatible.

[Sidenote: Louis and the Church.]

Louis’s relations to the Church bring out strongly the best sides of his character. No king was ever so anxious to give the Church its due, and to protect churchmen from grasping barons or greedy crown officials. He regarded his rights of patronage and his custody of the temporalities of vacant sees as sacred trusts, and he strove, so far as he could, to prevail upon his barons to follow in his footsteps. Guided by the wise counsels of William of Auvergne, bishop of Paris for the first twenty years of his reign, he safeguarded the interests of the monarchy as well as the interests of the Church. It was in his reign that the married clerks engaged in commerce were, at Louis’s instance, abandoned to the jurisdiction of the lay tribunals, and yet Louis more than once associated himself with his barons in protesting against the growing aggressions of the ecclesiastical courts. It was under Louis that the French clergy first felt the weight of regular and systematic taxation. The extraordinary favour which he showed to the Mendicants cost him something of the good wishes of the secular clergy and of the older orders. Franciscans and Dominicans were his chaplains and confessors, his habitual companions, and the instruments even of his secular policy. Their influence over him contributed towards the establishment of the Mendicants in a strong position in the University of Paris, despite violent secular opposition. Through the Mendicants Louis was ever inclined to ally himself with the Pope against the secular clergy. Yet that alliance had, as we have seen, its limits. The champions of Gallican liberties in the fifteenth century were not altogether at fault in regarding St. Louis as the first upholder of the national freedom of the French Church. The so-called ‘Pragmatic Sanction of St. Louis’ is indeed a forgery of the fifteenth century, but the hostility it expresses to simony, to papal taxation, to the temporal claims of Rome and the abuses of ecclesiastical elections, do not go far beyond his practice. It was, however, quite impossible for a pious churchman of the thirteenth century to formulate the doctrines of national independence that were afterwards upheld by the fathers of Constance and Basel.

[Sidenote: Louis’s Administrative System.]

The greatest result of St. Louis’s home government was the enlargement and definition of the administrative system which first sprang up as the result of the expansion of the monarchy under Philip II. This arose from the same necessities as the Anglo-Norman system, which had been perfected by Henry of Anjou, and in many details presents remarkable analogies to the polity already established beyond the Channel. The king was the centre of the whole system. His advisers were no longer the hereditary functionaries of the primitive monarchy. The royal household (_l’hôtel du roi_) now consisted of a band of clerks and knights, the chaplains, the scribes, the advisers and defenders of the king, and of the subordinate servants, who discharged purely menial and domestic functions. From the powerful body of clerks and knights of the household sprang the official class which represented the monarchy throughout the kingdom. Though many of the clerks were doubtless trained lawyers, the ministers of St. Louis were far from showing that pettifogging and litigious spirit that inspired king and household alike in the days of Philip the Fair.

[Sidenote: Baillages and Sénéchaussées.]

All France was divided into great provinces, and at the head of each was placed a royal official, called a _bailli_ in the north and a _sénéchal_ in the south, who roughly corresponded to, though they governed a greater extent of territory than, the sheriffs of the English crown. They nominated the provosts and inferior officers; they administered justice; collected the royal revenue; and were charged with the superintendence of the royal relations to the neighbouring feudatories as well as with the administration of their own districts. [Sidenote: Enquesteurs.] Their annual visits to the Exchequer connected them with the central government, and a further link between the central and local administration was found in the regular institution by St. Louis of _enquesteurs_, the _missi dominici_, or the itinerant justices of the Capetian monarchy, who, though casually employed by earlier kings, were now made a permanent element in the administrative system.

[Sidenote: The Differentiation of the Royal Council.]

Under St. Louis a process of differentiation similar to that which had evolved the Exchequer, Curia Regis, and other courts from the great councils of the Anglo-Norman kings, divided into three bodies the royal court of the Capetian kings. The _Grand Conseil_ became the administrative and political assembly; the _Parlement_ grew into the judicial mouthpiece of the crown; and _Maîtres des Comptes_ received and regulated the royal revenue. While the political Council still followed the king in the ceaseless wanderings of a mediæval sovereign, the Parliament gradually settled down permanently at Paris. With the elaboration of its organisation came an extension of its competence. Churchmen and lawyers agreed in believing that the king was the sole source of justice. Appeals to the king’s court became, under St. Louis, the substitute for the trial by combat, which he abolished. Not only were the inferior courts of the _baillage_ or _prévôté_ subordinate to the king’s court. It became usual for appeals to be taken to Paris from the highest courts of the greatest feudatories of the realm. The doctrine of the _cas royal_, the plea reserved exclusively for the cognisance of the crown, materially aided the extension of the Parliament of Paris. [Sidenote: The Parliament of Paris and the Extension of the Royal Jurisdiction.] Alfonse of Poitiers, as we have seen, imitated in his own fief the example of his sovereign and brother. The financial reforms of St. Louis, though important, were not so radical as his judicial changes. The _Gens des Comptes_ in session at the Temple in Paris prepared the way for the organisation of the _Chambre des Comptes_ under Philip the Fair. But almost alone of mediæval sovereigns, St. Louis was well able ‘to live of his own,’ and the ordinary revenue of the crown left a surplus for his religious and charitable foundations. [Sidenote: Finance and the Coinage.] Only the rare great wars, and the two Crusades of the king, necessitated recourse to exceptional taxation. Yet Louis was able to carry out a thoroughgoing reform of the coinage, and carefully upheld the value and purity of the circulating medium. In 1263 he issued an ordinance by which he gained for the royal mints the monopoly of supplying the monetary needs of the royal domain. Wherever no seignorial money was coined, there the royal money was to circulate exclusively. All that was allowed to the seignorial currency was that it should be accepted concurrently with the king’s money in those fiefs where the lord had an established right of mintage. It was, however, to be so struck that every one might see that it plainly differed from the products of the mints of the crown. This reform in itself was a great encouragement to trade. The protection of the communes by the king, the sound peace which enabled merchants to buy and sell without molestation, and the establishment of new towns, especially in the south, all furthered the growth of commerce. [Sidenote: The Towns and Trade.] The _ville_ of Carcassonne, whose plan to this day preserves the right lines and measured regularity of an American city, and which, with its Gothic churches and its busy industries stands to this day in such vivid contrast to the desolate _cité_ on the height, the witness of departed military glories, is an example of the numerous class of _Villeneuves_ and _Villefranches_ founded by St. Louis in his newly won domains in the Languedoc. Louis’s Christian zeal, no less than his hatred of usury, caused him to deal with excessive rigour with the Jews. [Sidenote: Jews and Cahorsins.] He was almost as intolerant of the Lombard and Cahorsin usurers, who had now begun to rival with the Israelites in finance. One of the least pleasing sides of the saint’s character was his cruel severity to blasphemers, heretics, and unbelievers. The same zeal led St. Louis twice to abandon France while he went on crusade. [See chapter xix.] But neither his long sojourn in Egypt and Syria nor his death at Tunis destroyed the effect of his work for his kingdom. Queen Blanche resumed her vigorous rule of France as regent during Louis’s absence from 1248 to her death in 1253, the year before his return. [Sidenote: The Pastoureaux.] The chief trouble Blanche had was with the strange popular gathering of the _Pastoureaux_, which, assembled under the pretext that shepherds and workmen were to supply the remissness of lords and knights and rescue St. Louis from the Egyptians, soon became a wild carnival of brigandage, which the regent had considerable difficulty in suppressing (1251). In 1270 Philip the Bold, the saint’s dull, but pious, docile, hard-fighting, and well-meaning son, succeeded as easily in the camp at Tunis as he could have done in Paris itself. The work of St. Louis was quietly and unostentatiously continued during the first years of Philip III.’s reign. In his later years the baleful influence of Charles of Anjou turned the heir of St. Louis to a more active and greedy policy that prepared the way for the extraordinary success of Philip the Fair, whose triumphant reign marks the end of the process that had begun with the early Capetians.