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,
