Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/579

 SAINT LOUIS.] to confine himself to affairs at home ; the East, with its dazzling attractions of religion and romance, called for his care ; by going thither he would escape from the conflict nearer home, the internecine struggle between the emperor Frederick II. and the papacy, under Innocent IV., and would fulfil the devout longings of his pious spirit by suc couring the afflicted Christians against the Moslem and the Tartar. Louis took the cross in 1244, with his three brothers. Robert of Artois, Alphonse of Poitiers, and Charles of Anjou; at Christmas 1245, &quot;the day of new clothes,&quot; when his courtiers donned their new -made cloaks, they found the significant cross on every shoulder ; still nothing was done awhile, for in truth France was rightly very re luctant to embark in eastern politics. It was not till 1248 that Louis set sail from Aigues-Mortes for Cyprus, the rendezvous for this crusade. The sultan of Cairo was now lord of Palestine ; the Tartars had destroyed the power of the sultun of Konieh ; Jerusalem was a defenceless heap of ruins. It therefore seemed best to attack the Moslem power at its centre ; and this crusade, instead of making for Con stantinople, Asia Minor, and Jerusalem, began on the other side by an attack on the headquarters of the Mahometan power in Egypt. In June 1249 the good king landed on the Egyptian shore and took Damietta without a blow. There the crusaders lingered till the place became a Capua to them ; for idleness brought on debauch, and debauch disease ; and fever, the avenger of war, soon attacked the army. After nearly six months of ruinous delay the king marched southward, fought the heroic though inconclusive battle of Massourah, which finally arrested his farther pro- gross towards Cairo ; and after another long delay the Christians were obliged to retire towards Damietta. On the retreat the whole army was taken by the Saracens, who massacred the common folk and held the nobles to ransom. Louis had to surrender Damietta, and to pay a heavy sum before he could sail from Egypt ; and even so, he was obliged to leave behind a vast number of Christian captives. Of the remnant of his great host only about one hundred knights followed him to Palestine, a fever-stricken com pany depressed with ill-fortune and defeat; the rest made for home. Louis landed at Ptolemais, one of the very few cities left in Christian hands, and found little to restore his confidence or the spirits of his followers. He remained four years in the Holy Land, chiefly engaged in arranging the ransom of his captive soldiers ; he freed all the prisoners left in Egypt, strengthened the few places held by the Christians, and was almost unmolested by the Saracens, who were nearly as weak in Palestine as he was. At last, on the death of his noble mother Blanche in 1253, finding that his army had almost entirely melted away, that he could not hope to achieve anything in Palestine, and that he was much wanted at home, he set sail at last, and reached France in September 1254, a sorrowful and beaten man. The one bright spot in this crusade was the development of the king s character ; men recognized in him the hero and saint, and what was least wise in his career has covered him with greatest glory. Still, the best part of his reign was to come ; nowhere had better government ever been seen in Europe than that which Louis carried on for the sixteen peaceful years which followed his first crusade. Some of his acts have been sharply criticized ; all, however, were in the direction and interests of peace. In 1258 he made treaty with King James of Aragon, settling all points of lordship at issue on that frontier ; in 1259 he came to terms with Henry III. of England, yielding to him the Limousin, Perigord, and parts of Saintonge, in return for Henry s abandonment of all claims on the rest of France. Louis hoped thereby to se cure perpetual peace and amity between the two countries. At home all his action tended to good. His noble charac- 543 ter, liis recognized justice, fairness, and holiness, enabled him 1267-70. to intervene as a peacemaker between his lords ; there was in him a generous vein of sympathy and love for his people, which prompted him to succour those in distress, to govern well because mercifully, to rule iti church and state as one who loved justice and judgment, and to whom the welfare of his subjects was a chief object and the aim of life. Throughout it all, however, he still cherished in heart the enthusiasm of the crusading spirit. He had failed once ; he would try again for the faith against the miscreant. And so in 12G7 he again took the cross, and in 1270, in spite of the remonstrances of his wisest friends, set sail once more, this time not for Constantinople or Palestine, or even Egypt, but for Tunis. The probable motive of this attack on Tunis was the ambition of the king s brother, Charles of Anjou: for a otrong Saracen power on that shore was always a menace to his newly acquired Sicilian and Neapolitan kingdom. Be that as it may, the expedition, as a crusade, attacking the very outskirt instead of the heart of the Moslem strength, was foredoomed to fail. The failure came from the beginning ; hardly were the crusaders landed when fever and dysentery set in. The king caught it and died. With him ended the crusading era (St Bartholomew s day, 1270). Louis the Saint had been a great king, as well as a pious and a virtuous one; in this he stands almost alone in French history. Nor was he backward in matters of learning; his age is an epoch in the growth of French literature. The university of Paris under his care rose to high repute ; the greatest learned men in Europe are con nected with this period of its history ; Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Saint Thomas Aquinas, all studied at Paris. In his reign Robert of Sorbon (1252) founded his college for ecclesiastics, and the famous Sorbonne began its long career. Literature flourished in prose and poetry ; the arts took a fresh, beginning ; Saint Louis raised that chief orna ment of architecture in Paris, the Sainte Chapelle. Above all, the king was notable for his justice, and the use he made of the law. The law, the natural ally of the throne in France, came to his help : by its aid he attacked or undermined feudal privileges ; he established a higher jurisdiction than that of the feudal courts, appointed itinerant justices, insisted on a real right of appeal in last resort to himself, curtailed the powers of baronial courts, and the freedom of baronial warfare, and finally rendered the king s &quot;parliament&quot; a great law-court. His legists issued a new code, the &quot; Establishments of Saint Louis,&quot; in which feudal custom was largely modified by the Roman law. The king also increased and consolidated the royal domain, acquiring property whenever it was possible, and administering throughout a uniform rule of law. The king dom also was greatly enlarged by his care : a large portion of the lands of the count of Toulouse, Chartres also, Blois, Sancerre, Macon, Perche, Aries, and Foix, all became his ; Normandy was formally made over to him by Henry III. His brother Charles of Anjou not only secured Provence for himself, and eventually for France, but by finally con quering the last of the Hohenstauffen secured, a doubtful good, French influence in southern Italy. Frederick II. had died in 1250; Manfred, his base-born son, became king of Naples; and Charles, invoked against the hated Hohen stauffen by pope Urban IV., defeated Manfred in 12C6, and his nephew Conradin, the last of the house, in 1268, thereby becoming king of the Two Sicilies. Then began that system of traditional savageness and cruelty which charac terizes all the mediaeval relations of France with Italy. The &quot;Pragmatic Sanction of Saint Louis&quot; is placed in the year 1269, and (if genuine, which is doubtful) laid down the maxims on which the liberties of the Gallican Church