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
