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what must have been the licence and tyranny of the baillis, or rather of the seneschals, as the royal functionaries were called in newly conquered lands, on the right bank of the Rhone, so far from any central control?

Louis perceived these effects of his absence, and abuse of his authority, for whilst upon the Rhone he issued his first ordinance relative to seneschals and baillis, which he amplified and re-issued from Paris two years later. By this edict Louis ordained, that all such officers were first to take an oath to administer justice to great and small, and according to the received customs of their districts. They were to accept no gifts, and to make no presents to the king's officers sent to inspect them. They were not to borrow money, or acquire property, or profit by adjudication in their districts. They were not to become linked with the inhabitants in marriage, for themselves or their children. No one was to be deprived by them of his heritage, without the king's knowledge; nor was any man to be arrested for debt, except it was due to the crown. In addition to these clauses, placing checks on the rapacity of his officers and magistrates, Louis enacted others, which were the foundation of his subsequent improvements in criminal jurisprudence. No one was to be kept in prison, who could justify himself, unless the judge had weighty reasons for detaining him. Interrogatories were to be communicated to accused, contrary to the practice of the Inquisition; and no man, however poor, was to be put to the torture on the testimony of a single witness. How enormous must have been the tyranny and abuses, which such an edict was so urgently required to remedy!

Blanche, as regent, had shown an equal desire to mitigate the severity of the government, at least in Languedoc. She had the happiness of beholding the consummation of her great act of policy, the acquisition

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of Toulouse. Count Raymond had not fulfilled his CHAP. vow to proceed to the crusade; he had made a journey to Spain, and on his return had witnessed the burning of eighty of his subjects, for their old heresy at Agen. No doubt they were in the hands of the Holy Inquisition, against which Raymond had found it vain to contend. That count expired in 1249; and Blanche immediately sent the brothers Chevreuse, to take possession of Toulouse in the name of Jeanne and her husband, the Count of Poitou. They met with no opposition. The young count was absent with St. Louis, and did not return until 1251. Blanche issued an edict in 1250, ordering their property to be restored to those who had fled from fear, without being guilty of heresy. Wives, she ruled, should not be dispossessed for the faults of their husbands, nor should a landlord lose his right because his tenants had been condemned by the Inquisition. An edict exists of the Count of Poitou, granting to the people of La Rochelle that the property of those who died intestate should not be forfeited. Whether this great immunity from church tyranny-for a testament could only be made in conjunction with confession and a priest's sanction-was extended to the rest of Languedoc, does not appear. The Count of Poitou on his return was well and tranquilly received by his new subjects.

The Count of Anjou did not find equal submission and quiet in Provence. The great cities of Avignon, Arles, and Marseilles had leagued against him, invoked the aid of the emperor, and levied troops to support their cause. On Charles' return Arles submitted, as did Avignon, which belonged conjointly to the Counts of Toulouse and of Provence; but Marseilles, which had resisted Raymond Berenger, resolved to maintain its republican freedom. Charles made no effort to enforce his authority at the time, but four years later, the Marseillais refusing to pay the 40,000 livres annually

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due to the count, in which they were encouraged by Boniface, Lord of Castellane, Charles brought an army from Anjou, and the citizens thought it better to yield. Their fortifications were razed, the count's jurisdiction established in high and low town, which he joined, and a garrison of his soldiers occupied the castle of St. Marsel. The Marseillais, however, remained turbulent; and when, in 1258, St. Louis married his son and successor, Philip, to Isabella of Aragon, he obtained a promise of the king of that country not to aid the people of Marseilles. In 1262 the townsfolk rebelled, chose Boniface of Castellane their leader, took the castle and ejected all the officers of Charles. The latter once more raised an army in Anjou, and marched to suppress the rebellion. He first laid siege to the chateau of Castellane, took it, and then wasted all the environs of Marseilles. After a long siege he reduced it by famine, his fleet blocking the port, and preventing any supplies from arriving. Charles promised to leave the citizens the liberties which they had been allowed in 1258, but he insisted on punishing those most hostile to him, and causing them to be decapitated. The reduction of Marseilles gave to the kingdom of France the important portion of the Mediterranean between the Alps and Pyrenees.

That Languedoc and Provence should in time have been a portion of that monarchy which had become so strongly constituted in the north, was but a natural and desirable result. What was to be lamented, was the harsh, the terrible and sanguinary mode of their subjection, which extinguished the peculiar civilisation of the south in blood, and which contributed to brutalise and to retard the north itself. In the south the oppression of the two great dominant classes of noblesse and clergy had been removed. They were in Languedoc, at the commencement of the thirteenth century, what they were compelled to become, in

northern France two centuries later, when feudalism and bigotry were mitigated, and when the wealth, influence, and education of the middle and civic classes made themselves felt, if not predominant, in society. The Church of Rome, therefore, by its rancorous determination to reduce the south of France to the dull and prostrate orthodoxy which formed its ideal of Christianity, threw back not only Languedoc, but France itself two centuries. Had north and south come more peaceably and equally together, the more free and more advanced condition of the southerns would have prevailed in a greater degree in the French constitution, and middle class liberties and ideas, both in religion and politics, might not have proved, as they continually did in France, and as they still unfortunately continue, a failure and an abortion.

Although it was in the reign of St. Louis that the French monarchy received the great extension which made it rival even the German Empire, that monarch was without the greed of acquisition. The salvation of his own soul, and the sanctification of the country, was his first object. To suppress profane swearing in his dominions was an aim of far greater importance to him than the annexation of a new province. He issued numerous ordinances on this subject, fixing the most severe penalties for such transgressions. He forbade

any of his own officers to play at dice or at chess, or to enter a tavern. And his anger at finding the Duke of Anjou engaged in a move of chess knew no bounds. His policy with regard to surrounding nations could not but partake of his Christian spirit. His anxiety was not to acquire, but to pacify, and he would have given up whole provinces, had his barons or his councillors not dissuaded him.

But whilst the king pursued this pious and equitable policy, the adventurous, acquisitive, and aggressive spirit of his family and his nation found an instrument

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and a representative in one of his brothers. This was Charles of Anjou, a prince equally greedy of glory and of gain, and touched by no scruple that stood in the way of either. He professed a respect for religion as profound as St. Louis. But whilst this sentiment in the king was always disinterested, the religious enthusiasm of his brother resembled that of Simon de Montfort, who contrived always to carve out empires for himself whilst fighting under the standard of the Cross. Charles, like all papal fanatics of the day, was an enemy of Frederic the Second, and ever ready to oppose the pretensions of the empire. This indeed he had found hostile to him in Provence, which really held of the emperor, and most of whose population regarded the French prince as an intruder.

Hainault was another of those countries which acknowledged the emperor as suzerain. It was Frederic who had declared the issue of the Countess of Flanders by the Count d'Avesnes legitimate. And St. Louis in his arbitrage had admitted the validity of the decree. The Countess of Flanders at a later period had a feud with the offspring of her first marriage. And in the war which ensued Charles of Anjou took active part, with the evident desire of wresting Hainault both from the D'Avesnes and from the German Empire. William of Holland came to their succour with a large army, and there was every prospect of a great battle between him and Charles, when the chiefs of both armies prevented the conflict. On the return of St. Louis from Palestine, he would not support his ambitious brother, but put a stop to the war, reinstated the D'Avesnes, on their paying a considerable fine, and thus restored peace to his northern frontier.

It was then that Charles turned his warlike efforts southwards, crushed the Imperial party in Provence, and reduced Marseilles. By that time the Imperial crown had passed to Richard of Cornwall, who could

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