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LOU into Champagne, and Louis invaded that territory. He burnt the town of Vitry, and, terrible to say, a church caught fire, in which thirteen hundred persons perished in the flames. From that time Louis was a changed man; he humbled himself before the pope; but this was not enough to relieve his conscience, and he took the cross. He set out in 1147 at the head of eighty thousand men. This great army was decimated in Asia Minor. Louis, however, went on and reached Jerusalem. His wife Eleanor was false to him; and, after various discreditable acts, obtained a divorce and married Henry Plantagenet, carrying with her her large possessions. By her Louis had two daughters. After the divorce he married Constance of Castile, by whom he had also daughters. At her death he married Alice of Champagne, who bore him a male heir, Philippe Auguste.—P. E. D.   VIII., called, son of Philippe Auguste and Elizabeth of Hainault, was born on the 5th of September, 1187, and died in Auvergne on the 8th November, 1226. He was the first king of the third race who was not crowned in the lifetime of his father. He married Blanche of Castile, and with her was crowned at Rheims, 6th August, 1223. He had been called to England by a party hostile to King John, but was unable to maintain his pretensions to the English throne. He then republished the confiscation which his father had made of Normandy, and resolved to drive the English out of France. At first he obtained considerable success; but Henry III. of England having gained over the pope, Louis was induced to conclude a truce for four years. He was soon called to Flanders at the instigation of Jeanne, who refused to acknowledge her father Baldwin, count of Flanders, and first emperor of Constantinople. Baldwin, supposed to have died a prisoner in Bulgaria, had suddenly reappeared. Jeanne called in the aid of France to oppose him, took him prisoner, and caused him to be hanged. The pope denounced this horrible war; and as a means of expiation induced Louis to undertake a crusade against the Albigenses. Louis placed himself at the head of the chivalry of the catholic north, and proceeded to invade the more liberal south. He besieged Avignon for three months, the magistrates refusing him passage through the city. Famine and disease nearly destroyed his army, but the city was taken and treated with relentless cruelty. Nismes, Alby, Carcassone, and Beziers, submitted, but Toulouse held out. The delay before Avignon had been fatal to the army. The great seigneurs retired and Louis departed for Auvergne, leaving Humbert de Beaujeu to finish the war. He died on the road—according to some accounts poisoned by Thibaut of Champagne, an admirer of the queen, but more probably from the epidemic that had smitten the army. Before his death he summoned the seigneurs, and made them swear allegiance to his son Louis, aged eleven, and to Queen Blanche as regent. Of his sons, Louis obtained the crown, Robert had Artois, Alphonse had Poitou, and Charles had Anjou. A daughter, Isabella, died at the convent of Longchamps, which she had founded.—P. E. D.   IX., called, one of the most illustrious monarchs who ever graced a throne, was the son of Louis VIII. and Blanche of Castile. He was born at Poissy, 25th April, 1215, and died before Tunis on a crusade, 25th August, 1270. Being only eleven years of age at the death of his father, the regency was held by his mother—not without an attempt on the part of his uncle, Philippe Hurepel, to seize the office for himself. This led to a war with the barons, who were ultimately put down. Blanche was a woman of extraordinary resolution, and, for the age, of extraordinary talent and virtue. She gave Louis the best masters that could be obtained, and brought him up strictly in the fear of God, telling him solemnly that, "he knew how well she loved him, but she would rather see him in his grave than guilty of mortal sin." So deeply was this engraven on the heart of the young monarch, that in all history we can scarcely find the instance of a man more scrupulously conscientious, or more sincerely pious. At the age of nineteen he espoused Marguerite of Provence, who was thirteen; but Queen Blanche kept them separate for six years, and seems always to have been jealous of the young queen. In 1242 Louis fought and gained the battle of Taillebourg against the English and the count of La Marche. In 1244 came intelligence of the great Mongol invasion, which, sweeping like a wave of destruction from the East, had reached Jerusalem, and overwhelmed both Saracens and christians. Louis was ill and at the gates of death when the news arrived; indeed one of the court ladies had covered his face with a cloth, thinking the spirit fled. He revived, however, and one of his first acts was to order the cross to be fixed on all his vestments. Blanche was in despair, and supplicated the renunciation of the rash design. Louis waited till he had perfectly recovered, and then summoning the archbishop of Paris and the queen, he took off the cross and handed it to them. "You see," he said, "that now I am in full possession of all my faculties—I now take the cross again." "'Tis the finger of God," said those present, and from that moment opposition ceased. Louis sailed on his first crusade from the port of Aigues-Mortes in August, 1248, with a large army, conveyed in ships hired from the Venetians and Genoese. He bore the pilgrim's staff and the oriflamme of St. Denis. He spent some time in Cyprus, and then went on to Egypt, thinking Egypt the best place to disembark. He took Damietta and remained there several months—a fatal error, to which Napoleon, who afterwards went over the same ground, attributed the failure of the crusade. Advancing to Mansourah, the count of Artois rushed into the town at the head of the templars. Count and knights were shot down by bolts from the houses, or cut down by the blades of the Saracens. The crusaders were defeated and compelled to retreat. Disease came, attacking the king as well as the army. The Saracen galleys blocked the passage of the Nile, and the king was taken prisoner. Queen Marguerite, however, held Damietta, and ransomed Louis and the army for eight thousand bezants of gold, part of which Joinville took from the treasure chest of the templars. Louis then went to Palestine, and spent four years in repairing and fortifying the coast towns that still remained in the hands of the christians. Queen Blanche died in 1253, and Louis returned in 1254 to govern with a wisdom not less remarkable than his courage and constancy in the field. His ordinances were incorporated in a code of laws, known as the "Establishments of St. Louis." He established the "quaranteen of the king," which provided that no one was to have recourse to arms until forty days had elapsed from the commission of the offence; and he published the "pragmatic sanction," which has always been regarded as the foundation of the liberties of the Gallican church. It provided that no money could be raised in France for Rome, without the sanction of the crown. He also established a national currency, and fixed the value of the current coins. He encouraged learning, established a public library, and in his reign, 1252, Robert de Sorbon founded the celebrated college of the Sorbonne. Louis' special friend was Joinville who had accompanied him on the crusade, and who left the famous chronicle of St. Louis. So high was his repute for wisdom and justice, that he was chosen arbiter between Henry III. and his barons. Louis decided in favour of Henry, and the "provisions of Oxford" were repealed. On the fall of the Latin empire of Constantinople in 1261, Louis again turned his thoughts to the East. The divisions of the christians were the cause of terrible disasters. Antioch had been taken by the sultan of Egypt, and one hundred thousand christians had been massacred within its walls. Once more Louis made his vows to God, and once more took the cross. He sailed in 1270 for Tunis with sixty thousand armed men. Plague soon appeared in the army—one of his sons fell a victim, and shortly after the king himself was assailed by the fatal malady. His last days he employed in preparing instructions for his son, characterized by marvellous simplicity and true christian faith. He then caused himself to be carried from his bed and laid on a bed of ashes. He there prayed earnestly for his people, beseeching God to deliver them from evil. His last hour approached, his strength failed, he sighed, and in a low voice said, "Oh Jerusalem! Oh Jerusalem!" the last words of the crusader monarch. He was succeeded by Philip the Bold, his second son; the eldest, Louis, having died before his father. By Marguerite he had eleven children, the fifth of whom, Robert, count of Clermont, was the founder of the branch of the Capetian line which took the name of Bourbon, and which came to the French throne three hundred years later in the person of Henry IV. In the history of monarchy there is no brighter character than St. Louis. In the field a brilliant soldier, in the closet a pious monk, on the throne an illustrious monarch, in council a wise and equitable law-giver, and in the seat of justice an incorruptible judge—a true Bayard, "Sans peur et sans reproche."—P. E. D.   X., called —the meaning of which is unknown, but most probably derived from his expedition against the insurrectionists of Lyons, seemingly at that time called Hutins—was the eldest son of Philip IV. and Jeanne of Navarre, and 