CHAP. to seek an interview with the count and his haughty countess, Isabella, and to grant terms, which the French historians have thought it more dignified not to record. Both parties separated, determined to appeal to arms. The Count de la Marche reckoned on the support of England. He also sought to conclude an alliance with the King of Aragon and the Count of Toulouse. But whatever these princes may have promised, they took no part in the ensuing war. De la Marche at Christmas, 1241, came to open rupture with Alphonso, defying him at Poitiers in full court, refusing his homage, and reproaching him with having wrested his county from Richard, whilst the latter was nobly combating in the Holy Land. The court of England used its utmost efforts to succour the Count de la Marche. Henry summoned a parliament, explained to it the conduct of the French king, and the aid which he had promised to the Poitevins. But the English barons were deaf to the king's demands; they complained that the monarch only seized such pretexts to extort money, and that he had already contrived successfully to collect considerable sums by the retention of episcopal revenues, and by numerous expedients. For their part, they advised the king to observe the truce with France, which if the French king broke, they would willingly come to the aid of their government. As to the Poitevins and the count, they merely wanted English money, which Englishmen were not inclined to supply. About the same time the king summoned his nobles to meet him in Parliament at Chinon, at the Easter of 1242, to defend Poitou, and crush the Count de la Marche. Thither came the Duke of Burgundy, the Count of Brittany, the Counts of Flanders, of Vendôme, of Nevers, of Soissons, and of Boulogne, the De Courtenays, and the De Coucys. There were 4000 knights, and 20,000 sergents and men at arms. To oppose such a force the King of England, utterly unsupported by his parlia VI. ment, embarked with 300 knights and 30 tons of ester- CHAP. lings*, with which he landed at the mouth of the Gironde. Such was the way in which the Plantagenets sought to recover their continental heritage from the Capets. The Poitevins, fearing or unable to meet in the field the forces of Northern France, put in practice the same kind of warfare which the prelates had taught them in the reduction of Toulouse. They laid waste the whole country, fortified towns and passes, and troubled and even poisoned the wells. Louis nevertheless advanced and laid siege to Fontenay, which was defended by a son of the Count de la Marche. The king took it in a fortnight. His officers were for hanging the son of the count. But Louis said no-that as a son and a servant, he had done but his duty. Henry in the meantime had marched from Royan to Saintes, and from thence continued his route, to encamp in the meadows of Taillebourg. The Poitevins had swelled his number of knights to 1600, whilst his esterlings had recruited a certain number of foot. The Earl of Salisbury, the Count de la Marche, and his brother Richard were with Henry, who, on seeing the French, with a force far outnumbering his own, upon the other side of the river, reproached the Count de la Marche with deceiving him. But the latter threw all the blame of misrepresentation, if there had been any, upon his wife Isabella, mother of Henry. There is a difference amongst the historians of the time how far the French had begun to cross the river when Richard of Cornwall, with a staff in lieu of a sword by way of a flag of truce, came to ask an interview with the French king. It was accorded him, and terminated in a truce until the next day. The English took advantage of the interval to retreat from Taillebourg. The French pursued them the next day to Saintes, the foragers and plunderers advancing to the gates of that * From whence pounds sterling are derived. CHAP. VI. town. The Count de la Marche issued forth to repel them the English were obliged to come to his support, and the action became general at the gates of Saintes, many persons being taken on both sides. But the troops of Louis were far the most numerous, and had the advantage. The result of the combat was the immediate submission of the Count de la Marche to Louis. As to Henry, thus deprived of the soldiers which swelled his army in return for his esterlings, he had nothing for it but flight, and he accordingly retired precipitately to Blaye, and from thence hastened to shut himself up in Bordeaux. The victorious army of Louis suffered much from the heat of the summer, and from the unhealthiness of the season in that part of the country which was the seat of war. Louis himself fell ill, and was unable to prosecute hostilities beyond the Garonne. Contented, therefore, with the reduction of Poitou, and of the strong castle of Mirabeau, which was the last to surrender, the French king concluded a five years' truce with the English, and allowed their chiefs to return to England by way of France. This permission they took advantage of, "suffering merely,” says Matthew Paris, "from the raillery of the French as they passed." Although Raymond of Toulouse had promised aid to De la Marche in the war, he was unable to furnish it, He was chiefly prevented by illness; but he at the same time gave signs of discontent, and of a determination to shake off the yoke which weighed upon him. This display of courage on his part encouraged the oppressed Albigenses to an act of vengeance. They surprised the chief Inquisitors Arnaud and Stephen, two monks, with the Archdeacon of Toulouse, and others, whilst engaged in the work of persecution at Avignonet, and put them to death. In former years this would have instantly produced a crusade, and the ruin of Raymond. But on this occasion it led to no result. Raymond, as soon as he learned the victory of St. Louis at Saintes, submitted; and the French king, having secured the reversal o county of Toulouse, showed no wish to repeat the hars ness of past times. In the years which immediately followed Louis' successes in Poitou, the good king first appears as a legislator. Since the commencement of his reign, the disaffection or turbulence of the noblesse had occupied his mother's care and excited his own anxiety. To put down such attempts with the sword would have satisfied a rude prince. Louis sought not merely to repress such turbulence, but prevent it, and remove the principal causes. He now summoned to him all those nobles who held fiefs from the English, as well as from the French crown, and he informed them that he could no longer suffer a double allegiance, which was a trap for treason, and an incessant occasion of war. However contrary to custom, the demand of Louis was so just, that no serious remonstrances were made; and as the English king followed the example, a line was drawn between French and English noblesse which had not till then existed, and which, as it strengthened the feeling of nationality on both sides, removed many of the petty occasions of inveteracy and war. Another ordinance of this early period of Louis' reign is his promulgation and enforcement of what was called quarantaine le roi, directed against the right of private war. Great efforts had been made in Germany to restrain this organised anarchy. Frederic the Second at the Diet of Frankfort, in 1234, caused a law to be passed, forbidding any one to attack his enemy without giving him warning at least four days in advance. Louis ordained, that after a crime had been committed, no one should attempt to avenge it for forty days. By previous custom and law, the relations of the murdered. or the injured man were obliged to take up his wrong, and avenge it even on the relatives of the criminal to the fourth degree. This was forbidden within forty VI. CHAP. days under a penalty of death. And it was subsequently provided that during that interval, the relations might apply to the lord of the district, or the bailli, who interposed the king's justice, and superseded the action of private vengeance, previously legalised by the law. In both ordinances St. Louis struck at feudalism, and the independent privileges of the barons. This was with no purpose of humbling the nobles as a class, but from a Christian motive, to prevent disorders, to proscribe vengeance and the endless effusion of blood. In promulgating these important and beneficent laws, Louis never consulted his barons or summoned a parliament. He convoked those assemblies to demand their adhesion in any national resolves, such as a demand of the Pope, a war with England or Poitou; but in matters of legislation he felt bound to dispense with them. For in truth the legislative reforms of St. Louis being directed against the aristocracy, to have consulted them would have been to retard or defeat the royal purpose. This may excuse St. Louis, but strongly manifests the oversight of the French nobles, who seemed ignorant and careless of defending their rights, to which the aristocracy of all other countries showed themselves at the time most sensibly alive. The English, the Spanish, the German noblesse maintained their privileges in those days, whilst the French alone assisted thoughtlessly, or impassively, at the growth of absolute power. Events turned the mind of Louis from the task best fitted to it, the care and organisation of his own do. minions. In 1244 news arrived of a fresh capture and sack of Jerusalem by the infidel, and at the same time of the flight of Pope Innocent from Rome, and of his taking refuge in France, full of rage and animosity against the emperor. The fall of Jerusalem was what most nearly touched and affected the heart of Louis. The Pope's coming was an embarrassment, by which, |