contemporaries by the purity of his soul. He seems to have been a strange, complex man, terrified by his dominant mother and her threats of the devil into wearing a hair shirt by day and, at night, performing fifty genuflections and reciting as many Ave Marias before going to bed. In Maurice Druon’s summation, “He was one of the great neurotics of history. Had he not inclined to saintliness he might have been a monster. Neros are made of the same fibre.”
Certainly, with his passion for crusading he would seem in the eyes of today’s historians rather less than deserving of sainthood. But he brought to the Capetian dynasty a morality which would die with him. In geopolitical terms, he routed Henry III’s English at Saintes in 1242, then concluded a (brief) peace with England. During his reign the unfortunate Albigensians were finished off (1229), and Languedoc became assimilated into France, and, through his marriage in 1234 to Margaret of Provence (another powerful woman), he acquired for France a claim to one of the richest and largest of her neighbours to the south. By the Treaty of Paris of 1259 Normandy, Anjou, Maine and Poitou were attached to the French Crown, bestowing on Louis considerable prestige in Europe.
Louis was very tall and thin, his figure described as being “bowed by fasting and mortification.” Some of his earthier contemporaries were not impressed by his excessive piety, which extended to washing the feet of his nobles, and on occasion they jeered at him for being a “king of priests” rather than of France. Inflexible in his beliefs, he installed the Inquisition in France, with all the misery which that was to bring, and turned his back on the liberalism of the twelfth century.
In 1248, channelling his piety into crusading zeal, Louis embarked on the Seventh Crusade, against the wishes of the Pope and against the judgement of his counsellors. In a remarkable display of the French monarchy’s new solidity, he also took with him Queen Margaret and two of his brothers, leaving his mother, Blanche of Castile, once more in charge in Paris. The aim of the Crusade was to liberate the Holy Land from the Sultan of Egypt, but—as usual—things went wrong and by 1250 Louis, stricken with typhus, was a prisoner of the Sultan at El Mansura after a catastrophic massacre of his forces. With great difficulty the King raised his own heavy ransom with recourse to the affluent Knights Templar, though at first they had refused. He then opened negotiations with the Muslims for the delivery of Jerusalem—which might well have succeeded but for the arrival of news of the death of the Regent, his mother Blanche.
Hastening home to Paris, he found a sea of internal troubles arisen in his absence, including a bizarre peasant uprising known as the revolt of the pastoureaux. Their origins obscure, their alleged goal was to deliver the King from imprisonment, and they wandered in bedraggled, penniless bands from village to village in the northern provinces, finally descending on Paris as a horde incremented by thieves, vagabonds, gypsies and tarts. Initially they found much sympathy in a populace now fed up with crusading and with a Church grown fat on privilege and corruption. Estimated at 60,000 strong, they killed several priests, threw others into the Seine, wounded a large number and indulged in various acts of apostasy. Eventually their assaults extended to the propertied nobility and the Jews. Driven out of Paris by a populace that swiftly tired of them, the pastoureaux then moved on to cause trouble in Rouen and Orléans. On the King’s return, they were mercilessly hunted down and hanged as far away as Aigues Mortes, the great embarkation port created by the Crusaders at the mouth of the Rhône. This anticlerical jacquerie, like other similar movements in medieval France, left behind no legacy.
Back in Paris, Louis continued the work of consolidating and building on the institutions created by Philippe
Certainly, with his passion for crusading he would seem in the eyes of today’s historians rather less than deserving of sainthood. But he brought to the Capetian dynasty a morality which would die with him. In geopolitical terms, he routed Henry III’s English at Saintes in 1242, then concluded a (brief) peace with England. During his reign the unfortunate Albigensians were finished off (1229), and Languedoc became assimilated into France, and, through his marriage in 1234 to Margaret of Provence (another powerful woman), he acquired for France a claim to one of the richest and largest of her neighbours to the south. By the Treaty of Paris of 1259 Normandy, Anjou, Maine and Poitou were attached to the French Crown, bestowing on Louis considerable prestige in Europe.
Louis was very tall and thin, his figure described as being “bowed by fasting and mortification.” Some of his earthier contemporaries were not impressed by his excessive piety, which extended to washing the feet of his nobles, and on occasion they jeered at him for being a “king of priests” rather than of France. Inflexible in his beliefs, he installed the Inquisition in France, with all the misery which that was to bring, and turned his back on the liberalism of the twelfth century.
In 1248, channelling his piety into crusading zeal, Louis embarked on the Seventh Crusade, against the wishes of the Pope and against the judgement of his counsellors. In a remarkable display of the French monarchy’s new solidity, he also took with him Queen Margaret and two of his brothers, leaving his mother, Blanche of Castile, once more in charge in Paris. The aim of the Crusade was to liberate the Holy Land from the Sultan of Egypt, but—as usual—things went wrong and by 1250 Louis, stricken with typhus, was a prisoner of the Sultan at El Mansura after a catastrophic massacre of his forces. With great difficulty the King raised his own heavy ransom with recourse to the affluent Knights Templar, though at first they had refused. He then opened negotiations with the Muslims for the delivery of Jerusalem—which might well have succeeded but for the arrival of news of the death of the Regent, his mother Blanche.
Hastening home to Paris, he found a sea of internal troubles arisen in his absence, including a bizarre peasant uprising known as the revolt of the pastoureaux. Their origins obscure, their alleged goal was to deliver the King from imprisonment, and they wandered in bedraggled, penniless bands from village to village in the northern provinces, finally descending on Paris as a horde incremented by thieves, vagabonds, gypsies and tarts. Initially they found much sympathy in a populace now fed up with crusading and with a Church grown fat on privilege and corruption. Estimated at 60,000 strong, they killed several priests, threw others into the Seine, wounded a large number and indulged in various acts of apostasy. Eventually their assaults extended to the propertied nobility and the Jews. Driven out of Paris by a populace that swiftly tired of them, the pastoureaux then moved on to cause trouble in Rouen and Orléans. On the King’s return, they were mercilessly hunted down and hanged as far away as Aigues Mortes, the great embarkation port created by the Crusaders at the mouth of the Rhône. This anticlerical jacquerie, like other similar movements in medieval France, left behind no legacy.
Back in Paris, Louis continued the work of consolidating and building on the institutions created by Philippe
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