Nine King of France

[In the year 1223] died Philip, the wise king of the French, and was buried at St Denis … he was succeeded by his son Louis, but how dissimilar were the father and the son!

(Matthew Paris)

Louis was the king. Despite being in the unusual position, for a Capetian, of not having been crowned during the lifetime of his father, there was no question over his accession; no better-qualified rival claimant could possibly appear, so the throne passed smoothly from father to son once more. There was a great deal which required the new king’s attention: the appointment of royal officers, the handover of government and administration, and the preparation of official communications, to name but a few, but the most important immediate task was to organise a coronation ceremony. This was arranged speedily for 6 August 1223, the feast of the Transfiguration, and Louis and Blanche set off from Paris a week beforehand so that they could ride in state, at a leisurely pace, through the countryside to the great cathedral at Reims where all French kings were crowned. The nobility and clergy of France had been summoned and all who were able made their way to Reims too, gathering ready on the morning of the big day.

Despite the time of year the summer’s heat would not have penetrated the thick stone walls of the cathedral, which had been reconstructed during the preceding decade after being damaged by fire in 1210. The assembled throng included well-dressed and bejewelled nobles, clerics in their finest robes, and notable guests including John de Brienne, king of Jerusalem; they gathered in the cool and airy space as they waited for the king and queen to arrive. Louis and Blanche made a ceremonial entrance and walked up the towering nave, through the crowds, towards the altar. The coronation was to be performed by William de Joinville, the archbishop of Reims, as was his right. Various nobles were tasked with bearing items of regalia during the ceremony. The privilege of carrying the new king’s sword had briefly threatened to become the subject of conflict among his companions, but the honour eventually went to Philip Hurepel, Louis’s half-brother, who had now reached his majority and assumed his inheritance, in right of his wife, as count of Boulogne.

The first part of the coronation was spiritual: a solemn Mass was sung, and then the archbishop anointed Louis with sacred oil from the holy ampoule, a vial of Roman glass which was reputed to have been associated with the baptism of Clovis, the first Frankish king to convert to Christianity, in the year 492. The sceptre was put in Louis’s right hand, and a rod known as the ‘Hand of Justice’ in his left. And then, finally, after all his years of waiting and the missed opportunities, a golden crown was placed on Louis’s head. How he felt when the cold weight, and its attendant responsibilities, pressed down on his brow we can only imagine.

The second part of the ceremony was military: Louis was the first knight of the kingdom and the leader of the armies of France, and this was reflected in the giving of martial symbols. He was presented with his sword, shield, spurs and standard. Then, amid wild applause, he moved to sit on his throne while the shorter coronation of the queen – who was crowned and presented with a small sceptre – followed.

And then the celebrations could begin. A huge banquet costing some £4,000 (approximately one-fiftieth of the total annual royal income) had been arranged: ‘the feast was the most beautiful and the richest which had ever been seen at a king’s coronation,’ says the Minstrel of Reims, alas without giving us any information about the menu, which remains a mystery to this day. The following day Louis and Blanche started to make their way back to Paris to make a formal entrance into their capital. Nicholas de Bray, chronicler of Louis’s reign, is in fine form as he describes the scene:

The light is outshone by a new light; the sun thinks that another sun has come to illuminate the earth, as its accustomed splendour is eclipsed. In the squares, at the crossroads and in the streets there is nothing to be seen but garments resplendent with gold; fabrics of silk shine from all sides … the churches are decorated with garlands, the altars surrounded with gems, the perfume of incense lifts into the air … joyous young people dance and sing in the streets.

Nicholas is probably (not for the first or the last time) exaggerating here, but there was certainly reason for the citizens to celebrate. As there had not been a coronation for forty-three years, this was a new experience for many if not most of them, and they were determined to enjoy it. They had further cause to rejoice in the peace with which the crown had passed on: there was a new king but he was a familiar and trusted figure in Paris, and there would be no upheaval in their daily lives.

Louis and his nobles reached the royal palace on the Île de la Cité and prepared to receive the citizens and the gifts they offered. The king was able to relax at last, safe in his position and looking forward to the future. Nicholas de Bray, as we noted in the Introduction, is very fond of both hyperbole and obscure references to ancient or mythical figures, but just occasionally in his writing there is a touch of the eyewitness’s realism and an unexpected gem to be found. Here we find one such passage, and in the hot and crowded palace we can peer through the throng and get that rarest of things, a brief glimpse of Louis in person: ‘Seeing so many of his illustrious friends gathered together in front of him, the king cannot contain in his heart the joy which he feels. It shows on his face: his cheeks colour and his features become animated with a vivid expression of energy.’

Once the emotion of the coronation was over, it was time for work. Louis was now thirty-five, not the hot-headed youth he might once have been, but a mature man. But how to step into his father’s shoes? As Matthew Paris points out in the quote at the beginning of this chapter, Louis was indeed different to Philip, but they shared many of the same goals; Louis would carry on his father’s dynasty-building work, consolidating his gains and extending the Capetian domains and influence still further.

There has long been a view among some historians that Louis and Philip were in conflict for much of Louis’s life, but as we discussed earlier there is little hard evidence for this supposed antipathy. If the father–son rivalry had been intense we might have expected that one of Louis’s first acts on his accession to the throne would have been a wholesale clear-out of Philip’s counsellors, the men who represented the old regime. In fact, Louis did nothing of the sort. He kept on both of his father’s closest advisers, Bartholomew de Roye and Guérin, bishop of Senlis; indeed, he officially named the latter as chancellor, a role he had long been performing without the title, which Philip, with characteristic unwillingness to let anyone have too much power, had not bestowed upon him. Louis also retained Philip’s marshal: although the office was not strictly hereditary, this was John Clément, who had held the office since the death of his father, Henry, on Louis’s campaign at La-Roche-aux-Moines in 1214. Ours de la Chapelle, who had accompanied Louis on his English expedition, retained his position as chamberlain. Louis did add to his circle of advisers by taking on some men of his own: among those welcomed into the new king’s household was Simon Langton, now forgiven by the pope for his part in Louis’s English campaign and his excommunication lifted.

So the early months of Louis’s reign were characterised by both stability and renewal. As part of the process of consolidation, Louis decided to visit straight away the kingdom’s most recently annexed domains, where loyalties were the newest and therefore potentially the shakiest. In September 1223 he and Blanche rode through Touraine, Anjou and Normandy; they made a second journey in November, this time heading north to Arras and Flanders. On both journeys Louis received homage and oaths of fidelity from his nobles, and was welcomed by the people, who were no doubt glad to have a strong and proven man as the new king, which would mean peace. ‘No rebel dares to raise unjust arms against the power of royal majesty,’ says Nicholas de Bray; ‘Normandy does not lift its head, and Flanders does not refuse to wear the yoke of this powerful prince.’

But Louis was not content simply to coast on the back of his father’s achievements; he wanted to add more of his own. And one way in which he could do this was to restart his war with the English crown. The truce which Philip had extended in 1220 was due to expire at Easter 1224, so once Louis returned from his peregrinations he turned his mind to the question of how best to ensure the ascendancy of the French crown over the English one. Invading England again was not a realistic scenario at this point, but he could certainly aim to drive the English out of France.

All had not been peace and prosperity in England during the previous six years. The regent William Marshal had died in 1219, his proto-dynasty as earl of Pembroke and Striguil later to come crashing down as all five of his sons died childless one after the other. The other high-ranking noble who had supported Henry’s cause during the war, the earl of Chester, had left England in 1218 to go on the Fifth Crusade. The regency was therefore for some time held by the trio of Hubert de Burgh, the justiciar, Peter des Roches, the bishop of Winchester, and the papal legate Pandulf, who had replaced his compatriot Guala in 1218 when the latter returned to his native Italy. The major achievement of the triumvirate had been to ensure the re-coronation of Henry in May 1220, this time at Westminster Abbey and with the ceremony conducted by the archbishop of Canterbury so that no doubts could surface over the validity of Henry’s kingship. But they were not a comfortable group, falling out with each other and finding that rule by committee was time-consuming and tiresome. Pandulf resigned as a legate in 1221 and Peter des Roches left his position as Henry’s guardian shortly afterwards, leaving Hubert in sole charge with a council to consult over major decisions. However, Hubert was not from one of England’s foremost noble families and some of the lords resented his power. There had been a number of revolts against him, including one by William de Forz, the earl of Aumale, who as we might remember was one of the notable waverers during the war. In the spring of 1224, as the truce with France was about to expire, Henry was sixteen years old (and still some way off taking the reins of government into his own hands) and Hubert was embroiled in fighting off a rebellion led by Falkes de Bréauté, erstwhile favourite of King John. The time was ripe for Louis to strike.

Some indication of the confidence, indeed bullishness, of the atmosphere of Louis’s early kingship can be found in the writings of William the Breton. His Deeds of Philip Augustus, as we have seen, terminates with the old king’s death, but in 1224 William penned an addendum to his Philippide, known as the Conclusion and Exhortation to the New King Louis, in which he anticipates some rather ambitious aims:

[Poets] will sing of the brilliant start to your reign, and will tell of the transports of joy and the applause with which France welcomed her new king … you will be a subject worthy of their songs … you will suffer no longer to reign in peace this new king who dares to bear the English sceptre which, taken from his father by just sentence, belongs only to you, is reserved only for you through the rights of your wife, and which was conferred on you by the unanimous election of the clergy, the people and the nobles of England. This enterprise calls you, and you will prepare for it after Easter following the expiration of the truce which John begged from your father. Therefore, joyfully taking up arms under favourable omens … start to re-establish the rights of your kingdom, and add a kingdom to a kingdom, giving the signal for combat … take no rest until the child of England, vanquished by your armies, has resigned into your hands the sceptre to which he has no right, so that you may at last reign over both realms.

Louis did not renew the truce, a decision which was formally announced on 5 May 1224. Then he rolled up his sleeves and got started on his long-term plan, turning his attention to Poitou, a region of Aquitaine. Aquitaine had once been subject to the overlordship of the king of France, but it had passed into the control of Henry II of England when he married Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was duchess in her own right. By 1224 ‘duke of Aquitaine’ was one of the titles of Henry III. During May Louis scored a masterstroke in advance of the campaign when he agreed terms with Hugh X de Lusignan. Hugh wielded great influence in the region as he was both count of La Marche (having succeeded his father, Hugh IX, in 1219) and count of Angoulême via his marriage to Isabelle, widow of King John and heiress to that county as her father’s only child. The fact that his wife was the king of England’s mother did not seem to bother Hugh as he responded readily to Louis’s overtures. Hugh had long coveted the Isle of Oleron, off the French Atlantic coast just south of the major port of La Rochelle; it would have been part of the dowry of Joan, Henry III’s sister, when she was betrothed to Hugh, but had not formed part of his marriage settlement with Isabelle. Louis agreed that if he could use Hugh’s lands in Poitou as a base for his attack against the remaining English territory in the region, then control of Oleron would pass to Hugh as soon as they captured it. Hugh agreed, so Louis was able to move forward with his plans.

Now that he was king, Louis had the resources of the French crown at his disposal, and so was much better equipped for this campaign than he had been for his invasion of England. Not only could he summon all royal vassals to join him, but he also benefited from the frugality which Philip Augustus had exhibited with his annual income: during his reign Philip had doubled his revenues, quadrupled the size of the royal domain, and in his later years spent only around two-thirds of his income each year, so he had built up a significant store of treasure which Louis could call on.

Louis mustered his army at Tours on 24 June 1224: the Life of Louis VIII says that ‘he assembled a great company of bishops and prelates, and a large host of barons, knights and sergeants’. Nicholas de Bray adds the detail that the host included combatants from Brittany, Normandy, Flanders and Champagne – local differences put aside, almost the whole realm was represented. Nicholas attributes a very flowery speech to Peter de Dreux, duke of Brittany, saying that he and his companions would be loyal to Louis forever, and that they would follow him whatever the dangers; although it is possible that the real Peter did not make quite so many classical allusions to Scylla, Charybdis, Cerberus and so on, the enthusiasm strikes a plausible note. These men had been with Louis since their boyhoods; they were his companions in arms, they were now the great peers of France, and he was the king. Adventure and glory awaited.

Among those in the host were Guérin, the chancellor; Philip Hurepel, Louis’s younger half-brother; Robert, count of Dreux; Guy, count of St Pol; and Theobald, count of Champagne. Also included was John de Brienne, the king of Jerusalem, who had attended the coronation the previous year. A French nobleman by birth (the second son of the count of Brienne, a fiefdom in Champagne), he had gained the throne by marriage to Maria de Montferrat, the heiress of Jerusalem. At the conclusion of the unsuccessful Fifth Crusade he had arrived in western Europe and was now on a tour there trying to find more help for his kingdom. Possibly he thought that fighting for Louis at this point would do his cause good, but he was to wander through France, England, Italy and the Holy Roman Empire before finally finding practical support in León in the shape of an alliance with Alfonso IX and a marriage to Alfonso’s daughter Berengaria, who was Queen Blanche’s niece. But that was still in the future: for now John was an experienced knight with forty years of tournaments and fights behind him who would be a useful addition to the host.

Notable by his absence on the march was Peter, duke of Brittany, but this was because he had been assigned a different role to play: perhaps suspicious of Hugh de Lusignan’s new-found loyalty (his family did, after all, have a conspicuous history as vacillators), Louis had inserted a clause in his agreement with Hugh that he would turn his castle of Lusignan – some 15 miles (24 km) south-west of Poitiers – over to the duke of Brittany for the duration of the campaign. Thus Peter was ensuring peace and stability behind the main advance. Possibly he chafed at the relative inaction, but he obeyed his orders nonetheless.

This gave Louis a safe space to the rear of his army as he advanced. First he marched on Montreuil-Bellay and secured a truce with the viscount of Thouars; then he turned south-west through Poitou with the eventual aim of reaching La Rochelle. The town of Niort, with a garrison commanded by the English seneschal of Poitou, Savari de Mauléon, surrendered after a short siege from 3 to 5 July; Savari and his men were permitted to retreat to La Rochelle with their lives and weapons. Next in Louis’s path was St Jean d’Angély, but the inhabitants there surrendered without a fight: the Life of Louis VIII tells us that ‘when those in the town heard of the approach of the king they doubted themselves and took counsel … they gave themselves up and received the king and his people honourably in the town’. Louis was treated to a reception as lavish as St Jean d’Angély could provide, and he could plan his next and biggest move: the assault on La Rochelle.

La Rochelle was of pivotal importance. It was the major port on that part of the Atlantic coast; the nearest alternatives of similar size were Bordeaux, 120 miles (190 km) south, or the inland port of Nantes some 85 miles (135 km) north. La Rochelle was the place where English kings landed when they came to visit their territories in France, as it was big enough both to disembark troops and to take refuge in if defeat threatened. The town’s wealth was built on trade, principally the wine trade with England, upon which it depended for much of its prosperity. The sympathies of its people could therefore be expected to lie with England; moreover, it was defended by an English garrison. Matthew Paris, recognising its importance, notes that ‘if [the king of France] can in any way subdue the town of La Rochelle, thenceforth he will easily possess the rest of the land of Poitou’.

As Louis rode with his army, he encountered some familiar issues with his nobles and the terms of their feudal service. The campaign had so far lasted for some twenty days, so some of the lords, Theobald of Champagne the most vocal among them, thought that starting the siege of a well-fortified city would take them beyond their statutory forty days’ service and should therefore not be attempted. Louis, predictably, was not in agreement, and he was supported by the churchmen present, including the chancellor Guérin, who thought that the campaign must be pushed to its end now they had got this far. The nobles were persuaded and the host moved on to La Rochelle.

Louis began the siege on 15 July 1224. The siege engines, the pieces of which had been rumbling along behind the host on carts, were unloaded, and the army began making ominous preparations, as Nicholas de Bray describes:

Here a knight polishes his helmet to remove traces of rust. Shields are made ready; swords are sharpened so that their steel points can inundate the earth with blood and turn the green grass red … footsoldiers make ready their catapults, and a mass of lead is converted into balls; machines are constructed which are destined to break down the walls and to cast blocks of stone to destroy towers and houses, to kill enemies … hands are full of darts and javelins, quivers are filled with arrows … they are not short of bows, heavy blades, cruel axes or falchions; each also arms himself with a sharp steel sword.

The bombardment began.

At first the garrison (augmented by Savari de Mauléon and his men from Niort) were in buoyant mood, having been warned of the royal army’s approach and having stocked up on barrels of grain, meat, fish and wine; they erected engines of their own and returned missile for missile for the first week and a half. However, if La Rochelle was to survive then it needed reinforcements and supplies sent across the Channel, and (in a neat reversal of Louis’s experiences in England) these were not forthcoming. Ralph of Coggeshall, documenting the situation from his point of view in England, tells us that the citizens ‘despaired of help from King Henry, who was meanwhile besieging the castle of Bedford’; Hubert de Burgh, the royal forces and a huge amount of resource were embroiled in a struggle there as they sought to wrest control of the castle from William de Bréauté, who was holding it in the name of his brother Falkes and keeping captive Henry de Braybrooke (whom we last saw defending Mountsorrel Castle in 1217), a royal judge who was hearing cases against Falkes which could lead to his downfall. After an eight-week siege Bedford would eventually fall, resulting in the hanging of the eighty-man garrison as well as William de Bréauté, but by then it was too late for La Rochelle.

By the beginning of August the garrison and the citizens there were not yet at their last extremity, but, knowing that no help would be forthcoming, they saw that there was no point in fighting on: the outcome was inevitable. They did not have enough troops to mount a sortie to try and break the siege; all they could do was sit tight and endure the bombardment until the walls gave way and the royal army came pouring in. It would be better for the inhabitants to accept the inescapable, in the hope of securing a settlement. La Rochelle surrendered to Louis on 3 August, and after a triumphal and peaceful entry into the town, the king allowed the garrison to leave with their lives and their arms; the burgesses swore fealty ten days later. The Life of Louis VIII is in jubilant mood as the English sail away: ‘they gave up the town, saving their lives, and fled to England. And in this way the English, who had long been lurking in this part of Aquitaine, left either voluntarily or under duress the kingdom of France.’ The icing on the cake came when the Isle of Oleron submitted to Louis without a fight; he kept his word and handed it over to Hugh de Lusignan. On French soil Henry III now had control only of Gascony, and could land only by sailing as far south as Bordeaux.

The king was victorious, and he was in a confident mood. When Hubert de Burgh knew that Louis was advancing on La Rochelle and that he would not be able to provide any military support, he had written to the pope, sending envoys to Rome with his message. This resulted in a letter from Pope Honorius to Louis dated 3 August 1224 (the very day on which La Rochelle had fallen), expressing his regret at the non-renewal of the truce with England and his shock that Louis should have resorted to war at a time when he could have been instead supporting the needs of the Holy Land. Louis was ‘asked and begged’ (note the wording) to stop attacking the lands of the king of England. By the time Louis received this letter the campaign was done and dusted, so he replied in vigorous fashion that King John had been justly sentenced to forfeiture, that England was a papal fief and that yet its resources were being used to oppose him in Poitou. Was this happening with the pope’s knowledge and consent? If so, he was ‘asked and required’ to ensure this was stopped. Louis’s envoys reached Rome with this letter in December 1224 and wasted no time in circulating rumours that Louis might just mount a second invasion of England if the pope did anything against his interests, and that the English barons might just be prepared to hand the crown over to him.

While various envoys were en route, Louis stationed garrisons in the towns of Poitou and successfully convinced the inhabitants that they would be safer and more prosperous under his rule than Henry’s. He then withdrew to Poitiers and thence to Paris.

Once in his capital he laid down his sword for a while and set about consolidating his conquests on parchment by making deals with nobles and by issuing charters to towns in Poitou which confirmed their privileges. It was in their best interests to stay loyal to him rather than rebelling on behalf of the absent (and unlikely to return in the near future) ‘duke of Aquitaine’, and the charters were accepted without challenge or complaint. Meanwhile, Savari de Mauléon had travelled back to England to explain what was under the circumstances an entirely justifiable surrender, but he was badly received, his explanations ignored and his motives suspected. Threatened with a charge of treason, he sailed back to France and threw in his lot with Louis, offering the king his sword in mid-December 1224. On submitting his castles as security, he was entrusted with the command of the new garrison of La Rochelle and the guard of the coast.

The next year or so would see a series of complex negotiations between Louis and Hubert de Burgh about peace and over merchant and shipping rights. For once out of his armour and his saddle and away from military camps, Louis was able to carry out this task from the comfort of Paris and the various royal residences, giving him at last some time in which to enjoy family life.

In May 1225 Louis and Blanche had been married for twenty-five years – two-thirds of their lives. During that time Louis had remained utterly faithful to her: unusually for a medieval king he fathered no illegitimate children, and no chroniclers, not even the hostile ones, mention any kind of mistress or even a passing liaison. Indeed, they show the opposite: the worst anyone could say on the subject was Matthew Paris’s comment that Louis was so devoted to his wife that he was too much under her influence. But then, she was an exceptional woman.

Blanche was as devoted to Louis as he was to her; she supported him in all endeavours to the point of facing down his all-powerful father, as we have seen, and riding around to harangue the nobles of France into raising troops for him. Blanche makes very few appearances in official documents. Of the 460 acts of Louis’s reign she appears in just three, all to do with family matters: the confirmation of her dower lands, the appointment of a chaplain to sing Masses in memory of their late son Philip, and Louis’s testament providing for his children, which we will explore later in this chapter. But it would be a mistake to assume that she played no part in Louis’s government – it is likely that they discussed matters in private and that he benefited from her advice. The intermediary role of queens during this period was well established, and indeed Pope Honorius wrote to his ‘dear daughter in Christ, the illustrious queen of France’ in May 1224 to ask her to intercede with her husband on the subject of aid for the emperor of Latin Constantinople.

Blanche was loyal not just to Louis but to France; by now she saw herself as a Frenchwoman, having left her home country when she was twelve and never returning. She had few remaining ties to Castile: her parents had died within three weeks of each other in October and November 1214, and she had never met her younger brother Henry, who inherited the crown of Castile, as he had been born four years after Blanche’s departure.

One of the principal duties of a medieval queen was to bear children, and in this regard Blanche was very successful; allowing for Louis’s frequent absences on various campaigns, she became pregnant at almost every opportunity. The agonising waits for a male heir, with the Capetian dynasty hanging on a single thread, which had characterised the previous two generations, became a thing of the past as son after son was born to the couple: after their short-lived daughter in 1205 Blanche gave birth to Philip in 1209; twin boys, possibly called John and Alfonso, in 1213; Louis in 1214; Robert in 1216; John in 1219; Alfonso in 1220; and Philip-Dagobert (the second half of the name being a reference to his Carolingian ancestors) in 1222. But a king needed daughters as well as sons, in order to form advantageous matrimonial alliances, so it was probably with more celebration than was usual at the birth of a girl that Isabelle, named for Louis’s barely remembered mother, joined the family in 1224. And two more sons were to follow: Stephen in 1225 and Charles in 1227.

We have already noted that child mortality was endemic in the thirteenth century, and unfortunately for Louis and Blanche, their royal rank did not exempt them from tragedy. Of their twelve children only five would reach adulthood; four (their first-born daughter, the twins and Stephen) would die in infancy, while Philip, John and Philip-Dagobert would all perish between the ages of eight and ten.

Royal children needed providing for. Louis might have many offspring, but he also had significant lands in his gift thanks to his own conquests and those of his father. In June 1225 he drew up a testament to distribute lands and to provide for his children. His eldest son, Louis, then eleven, was of course to be the next king of France, inheriting the crown and the royal domains, but what of the others? There were to be titles for almost all his sons: Robert, aged nine, was to be count of Artois, lord of Louis’s inheritance from his mother; John, six, would be count of Anjou and Maine; Alfonso, five, would be count of Poitiers and Auvergne. Three-year-old Philip-Dagobert would enter the Church, as would any further sons born to the king and queen. This giving of children to a religious life was common at this time, particularly in large families where there were too many sons to provide for comfortably. The boys in question would not end up as simple priests but rather as high-ranking clerics – bishops and archbishops who were socially and politically on a par with the great noblemen of the land. Unfortunately they tended to be chosen based on their order of birth within the family rather than on any particular aptitude or piety, so the end results varied considerably from great and ascetic scholars, to canny politicians such as Peter des Roches, to bullish warriors such as Philip Augustus’s cousin the bishop of Beauvais, who had battered the earl of Salisbury into submission at Bouvines and fought in the Third Crusade, his clerical status notwithstanding. Surplus girls could also be handed over to the Church – again, generally to become abbesses rather than simple nuns – but Louis had only one daughter, so it was envisaged that baby Isabelle would make a great marriage; she would have the enormous sum of £20,000 as her dowry.

As it transpired, Louis and Blanche’s son Philip-Dagobert died at the age of ten and so never started on his ecclesiastical career; John had passed away four years earlier, at nine, and his inheritance of Anjou and Maine eventually went to the youngest son, Charles, who had not yet been born when Louis drew up his testament. Great futures awaited all Louis’s surviving children. Charles would inherit his counties and would later be crowned king of both Sicily and Naples. Alfonso became, as envisaged, count of Poitiers, and also subsequently count of Toulouse via his marriage to Joan, only child of count Raymond VII. When Alfonso and Joan both died in 1271, without heirs, the county of Toulouse reverted to the French crown, adding considerably to the royal domain. Robert, count of Artois, was a steadfast and loyal retainer of his elder brother, accompanying Louis on crusade, where he was killed at the battle of Mansourah in 1250. And Louis went on to become one of France’s greatest kings, a crusader and a reformer of justice who reigned for forty-four years, renowned throughout Europe for his piety and known to posterity not as King Louis, but as Saint Louis. Isabelle would never marry, despite being pressed by Pope Innocent IV to marry Conrad, the son of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II who had been Philip Augustus’s ally; she chose instead a religious life, and supported by her brother she founded a convent of poor Clares in honour of St Clare of Assisi, one of the first followers of St Francis. Isabelle never took holy orders, preferring to avoid the inevitable rise to the rank of abbess which would follow; instead she lived quietly in the community she had founded until her death in 1270. She was later beatified; she is revered as a saint in the Franciscan order, so Louis and Blanche, although they did not know it in their own lifetimes, would be in the unusual and distinguished position of being the parents of two saints.

Louis would no doubt have been delighted if, in the summer of 1225, he could have looked into the future to see the destinies of his children, particularly the religious lives of Louis and Isabelle. But in thirteenth-century France religion meant conflict as well as comfort, and the king now found himself faced once more with the Albigensian question.

The war in Languedoc had been continuing on its bloody and destructive course. Raymond VI of Toulouse had died in 1222 but his son Raymond VII proved a more effective military leader; aided by the teenage Raymond-Roger de Trencavel, son of the old count of Carcassonne – and now titular holder of that honour although all his lands were in the hands of the de Montforts – he oversaw victory after victory. Conversely, Amaury de Montfort had proved less able than his late father, and he suffered loss after loss: Lavaur, Puylaurens, Montauban, Castelnaudri, Agen and Moissac were taken from him one by one by the resurgent southerners. The Cathars and the Perfecti who had been in hiding during the ascendancy of the crusaders emerged in public once more, and Catharism regained much ground at the expense of orthodox Catholicism. Amaury’s position became so perilous that he fled Languedoc altogether in January 1224. The cause was in danger of being lost beyond repair, and the pope appealed to Louis. Only a large-scale intervention from the king of France himself could swing the balance.

Before Louis mounted any military action he needed legal and ecclesiastical justification. The pleas of the pope were weighty, but what of the French clergy? A council was held at Bourges on 30 November 1225 at which the cases of the two claimants to the title of count of Toulouse were put to a council of forty archbishops, 113 bishops and 150 abbots, presided over by the new cardinal legate to France, Romanus of St Angelo. The result was something of a foregone conclusion: on the one hand there was Amaury de Montfort, son of the great crusader and champion of the Church; on the other was Raymond VII, excommunicate and suspected of being a sympathiser of the heretics. Amaury’s claim was upheld. The sentence of excommunication against Raymond was reaffirmed on 28 January 1226 at a general assembly of the nobles and clergy of France, at which point Amaury ceded his territorial rights to Louis, who became, officially, the overlord of Languedoc.

Having the title in theory was one thing; claiming it in practice was another. Louis needed to ride at the head of an army and take his new lands by force. Fortunately for him, this is something he was more than willing to do: not only would he be in the situation of being able to enlarge the royal domain, to his lasting fame and the credit of his dynasty, but he would also be fighting for his beloved Church in a legitimate cause. The campaign would be given the status of a crusade, meaning that Louis and his men would be granted the same privileges extended to crusaders in the Holy Land: they, their families and their lands would be placed under specific papal protection, and if they died on campaign they would go straight to heaven.

But there was more for Louis to take into account than there had been previously in 1219 and 1222. The last time Louis had mounted an expedition to Languedoc he had been a prince; now he was a king with the welfare of the rest of his realm to consider. The support of the laity, as well as that of the Church, must be gained: twenty-nine of the principal nobles of France put their names to an act confirming that they had advised him to undertake the crusade and that they would support him in it. Finances must be considered, so that the national coffers would not be emptied: taxes were levied, including a tithe of 10 per cent of the income of all clergy. And Louis must be able to prioritise the needs of France over the needs of the Church if necessary: he agreed with the pope that he would stay in Languedoc ‘only as long as he pleased’; that his vow to complete the crusade was not binding on his heirs if anything should happen to him; and that if Henry III of England should attack any French lands while Louis was away, he would fall under sentence of excommunication.

A huge army was mustered. The figures of tens or even hundreds of thousands of men given by the chroniclers are exaggerated, but it is safe to say that it was a larger army than was normally seen in western Europe at the time. It set out on the road in June 1226, travelling south via the Rhône valley and using the river to transport some of the baggage and supplies. There was a great deal to be moved: as he was making his way through friendly parts of his own realm Louis brought food, cattle and fodder with him so that his army was self-sufficient and had no need to ravage, requisition goods or live off the land. News that the king was on his way in person sped ahead of the host. Louis’s reputation both for victory and, when called for, for ferocity preceded him and many of the minor southern nobles fell over themselves to submit to him. ‘We are zealous to place ourselves beneath the shadow of your wings, and under your wise dominion,’ wrote one Bernard-Otho de Laurac. How much of this zeal was motivated by fear it is impossible to guess. Cities followed suit: Béziers, Nîmes, Puylaurens and Castres had all submitted before Louis got anywhere near them.

But Raymond of Toulouse was not going to give up so easily. He summoned those vassals still loyal to him, and appealed for help to his cousin Henry III of England (Raymond’s mother had been Joanna, sister to King John) and to Hugh de Lusignan, count of La Marche and Angoulême. He was unsuccessful: Henry was a pious son of the Church and did not wish either to associate himself with the forces allied with heresy or to put himself at risk of excommunication due to Louis’s agreement with the pope. More pragmatically, Hubert de Burgh would have seen the benefits of Louis being occupied in Languedoc, slugging it out with Raymond while England stood on the sidelines. Hugh de Lusignan, meanwhile, was – for now – comfortable in his alliance with Louis, which, as we have seen, had brought him great benefits, so he declined to join Raymond.

As the royal army advanced further south into Languedoc, one of the obstacles in its path was the great and supposedly impregnable city of Avignon, with its large bridge across the Rhône. Avignon was in the county of Provence rather than the county of Toulouse, so it had no reason to hold out against Louis, and he had no quarrel with it. Initially it appeared that the king and his host would have free passage through or around Avignon to cross the river and continue their journey, but this turned out not to be the case. Accounts differ as to how and why this happened.

A story which appears in Nicholas de Bray’s work and in another chronicle by a cleric from Ghent named Philip Mousket, but not in any of the official acts and documents of the campaign, is that Louis sent an embassy into Avignon led by Guy the count of St Pol, but the citizens, mistaking the count for the king himself (they were of similar age, and we may imagine that the embassy carried some kind of French royal banner), shut the gates behind them and celebrated their capture of the king, at which point Louis recognised their treachery. Other sources, including the generally reliable Chronicle of Tours and some letters of various barons, as well as Nicholas de Bray (who, rather confusingly, includes both tales), say that some of Louis’s army were already on or over the bridge when the citizens suddenly took fright at the sight of so many approaching armed men, refused entry to the king and the legate, shut the gates and sent out a party to destroy the bridge.

Whatever the precise reason for the decision, what is clear is that Avignon refused passage to the army, and that it now presented both an obstacle to the crusaders and a direct challenge to the king’s authority. This was not to be borne, so the following day, 10 June 1226, Louis ordered his siege engines to be set up around the city. A temporary bridge made of boats was built to enable those who had already crossed the river to return and rejoin the main host.

Avignon was garrisoned not only by local citizens but also by a large troop of mercenaries who were willing to defend the city. A description from inside the city appears in the chronicle of Roger of Wendover: Roger, of course, was far away in England (unlike Nicholas de Bray, who was actually present at Avignon) and is occasionally confused in his accounts of events overseas, but sometimes his descriptions are so vivid and detailed that he appears to have based them on eyewitness accounts. This is plausible as he was based in the influential and well-situated abbey at St Albans, meaning he was able to talk to guests who had travelled all over Europe and so glean many valuable details for this writing. Of Avignon he says:

The city, until that time unattempted by hostile troops, was well defended by trenches, walls, turrets and ramparts outside, while within it was well garrisoned with knights and thousands of soldiers, and well supplied with horses, arms, collections of stones for missiles, engines and barriers, and was well stored with provisions, and did not therefore fear the assaults of the besiegers; for the defenders of the city bravely hurled on them stone for stone, weapon for weapon, spear for spear, and dart for dart, inflicting deadly wounds on the besieging French.

One of the casualties of the early stages of the siege was one of the rarely named common men in the host: Amaury Copeau, chief of the engineers and miners without whom no siege could succeed. He was replaced by another man promoted to chief, and the siege went on. The walls were high, and the French army was separated from the city by the river, but the king was determined in his course of action and so the siege continued all through the summer. The besiegers suffered all kinds of ills. Not only were they subject to missiles from inside the city, but the outlying parts of the host were attacked in raids by Raymond of Toulouse and his men, who also destroyed all nearby fields and crops so that the host had to travel further and further afield to find ever-dwindling supplies of food. As they remained there, exposed to the burning Provençal sun of June, July and August, many of the troops fell sick and died, and the difficulty of disposing safely of the corpses of men lost through illness or assault only added to their problems. Roger of Wendover is again descriptive as he notes:

At this siege the French were exposed to death in many ways, from the mortality which was raging dreadfully among their men and horses, from the deadly weapons and destructive stones of the besieged who bravely defended the city, and from the general famine which raged principally among the poorer classes, who had neither food nor money. In addition to the other miseries, which assailed the army without intermission, there arose from the corpses of the men and horses, which were dying in all directions, a number of large black flies, which made their way inside the tents, pavilions and awnings, and affected the provisions and liquor; and being unable to drive them away from their cups and plates, they caused sudden death among them.

By early August discussions were taking place about the best way forwards. It would not do to be stuck outside the walls of Avignon for too many more months; but on the other hand if the siege were abandoned then a hostile city would be left behind the host – always dangerous – and Louis’s army would have to find another place to cross the Rhône. The knights and nobles, as ever, had been chafing at the lack of direct engagement with the enemy, and now Guy the count of St Pol (presumably escaped from his captivity, if indeed he was ever taken prisoner) became animated and urged an all-out assault, as Nicholas de Bray tells us:

The illustrious count of St Pol responded in these words: ‘What madness to waste our time with words! While we have been talking, we could have been knocking down the walls and attacking a thousand breaches. The sun is already setting in the west, and we cannot call back the hours we have lost. Whatever may be the determination of others, I will be the first to make an attack with my forces against the enemy!’

The other nobles agreed, and Louis – possibly against his better judgement, given what we know of his tactical acumen – allowed the assault to go ahead. It proved a total disaster. In order to get close to the city walls the army had to cross the river; they attempted to surge over a secondary bridge which was not sturdy enough for their weight, while being bombarded from inside the city. Nicholas de Bray’s eyewitness account has him dodging the missiles himself, while describing what he sees around him:

Arrows are falling more heavily than rain, causing injury and death on all sides. Thousands of stones flying through the air cause similar carnage. One perishes under the stones, another falls, pierced through the side by an arrow; a third receives a leg wound. This man here has his brains scattered after his helmet has been broken; that man there, exhausted by the weight of his shield, can carry it no longer; another succumbs, burned by a substance made of fire and sulphur.

The bridge collapsed and hundreds of men were thrown into the river, where they drowned, screaming as they were dragged under the water by the weight of their armour and equipment. The missiles did their work, too, and Guy, the brave and impetuous count of St Pol, was killed when a stone hit him directly on the head, an incident mentioned by all chroniclers of the event. ‘His brains were completely knocked out,’ says the Minstrel of Reims, bluntly; and this was ‘a great shame’, says the Life of Louis VIII, as ‘he was a valiant man, courageous in arms and fervent in faith’. Louis was devastated by the loss of his lifelong friend, his companion since boyhood, but his sorrow soon turned to anger. ‘He does not weep,’ says Nicholas de Bray, ‘because the bitterness of his feelings has dried his tears’; the Minstrel confirms that ‘when the king saw his friend dead, he was so enraged that he was almost out of his mind’. Louis ‘swore that he would not leave the siege until the city had been conquered,’ says the Life of Louis VIII, but now he would try a different approach. He forbade any more frontal assaults and settled in for the long haul: Avignon would surrender or starve.

The body of Guy de Châtillon, count of St Pol, was embalmed and transported in a coffin to a convent which had been founded by his family, where he was given an honourable burial. He was a widower, his wife Agnes de Donzy having died the previous year when barely out of her teens; their two children, a son of three and a younger daughter, were taken into the care of their maternal grandmother, Matilda de Courtenay, dowager countess of Nevers and one of the great matriarchal figures of the thirteenth century. The power bloc which Guy’s loyalty to the crown had produced (following the death three years previously of Hervé de Donzy, Guy was count not only of St Pol but also of Nevers, Tonnere and Auxerre, in right of his wife) was split, his son receiving the maternal inheritance and the county of St Pol going to Guy’s younger brother Hugh. By strange coincidence, Hugh would also be killed at Avignon by a stone from a catapult, in the service of Louis IX in 1248.

Louis grieved and his army sat tight around Avignon, allowing no supplies in and no people out. His overall situation was improved by the submissions of other towns which came to him while he remained in situ – Carcassonne, Albi, Marseille, Beaucaire and Narbonne, among others. If only Avignon could be taken, the rest of Languedoc lay open.

Eventually the citizens bowed to the inevitable. Help would not be forthcoming: no doubt the news of other submissions was shouted to them over the walls in order to sap their morale, and Raymond, still at large in the surrounding countryside, did not have sufficient troops to attempt the full-scale attack which would be needed to break the siege. Sometime in late August or early September (we do not have the exact date) Avignon capitulated. After the surrender of hostages for good faith the inhabitants opened their gates to the king. There were immediate repercussions which were both religious – the legate entered the city, performed absolutions, purified the churches, established new priests in post and appointed a new bishop – and military in nature: the ramparts, along with any houses considered to be fortified, were razed and ditches filled in. The citizens handed over all their weapons, siege engines and 6,000 marks to Louis. There were to be no executions, no massacre of the population; however, as Louis had to leave again almost immediately, he needed to leave the city in the charge of someone who would rule strictly in his name. His choice fell on William, the young count of Orange, whose father had been captured and burned alive, the remains of his body cut to pieces, during the crusade of 1218. William could be relied upon not to develop any sympathy for the defeated southerners.

Avignon had been reputed to be invincible, and Louis had taken it in three months. The French army now headed for Toulouse with no other towns standing in their way.

However, it was a reduced army. Once more Theobald of Champagne had been more concerned about his statutory forty days of service than about the overall success of the campaign. He had arrived belatedly, only once the siege of Avignon was under way, and had sought an audience with Louis as soon as his forty days were up. It is possible that he was jealous of the success of the king’s campaign, which brought glory to Louis and no particular gain to Theobald, all the more aggravating because things could have been so different. After all, if Philip Augustus had not acted as he did in 1218, Theobald could have been at the head of a crusade himself, his wealth and his prospects in the south being considerably enhanced thereby. He had not put his name to the act of January 1226 in which the nobles of France affirmed their support for Louis and his crusade, and he was not prepared to continue there any longer. We do not know exactly what was said, but there seems to be agreement among the chroniclers that there was a blazing row, and Theobald certainly left the army to return north. The author of the Chronicle of Tours, normally dispassionate in his writing and therefore considered a reliable source, is on this occasion scathing:

The count of Champagne, relative of the king, brought up in the palace of Philip Augustus, whom Louis defended with all his might … forgetting all honour and all affection, abandoned his lord and king in the middle of his enemies, in pressing peril, returned to France to the dishonour and ignominy of his name.

And so Louis marched on without one of his greatest vassals. The summer was over; by the time the army arrived at Toulouse it was mid-October. A siege of Toulouse would take many months, and winter, as we have already noted, was not a good time for campaigning. Louis was an eager knight and soldier, but he was also a leader, a strategist and a pragmatist. His army was tired. Many of the knights and men were sick. They were still being harried by Raymond’s forces and were sustaining losses. The only realistic decision was not to launch a siege of Toulouse at this point; instead Louis would lay the groundwork for another expedition the following spring to finish the crusade once and for all. He appointed seneschals and placed loyal garrisons in the towns which had submitted. Orthodox churchmen were placed in positions of clerical authority. While this was taking place he suffered more losses from illness, the great men being no less susceptible than the commoners: among the dead were William de Joinville, the archbishop of Reims who had crowned Louis, and Philip, count of Namur. Dysentery ravaged the army and they set off for home in late October.

It was not long after they turned back that Louis was first struck by severe stomach pains. As an experienced campaigner he can have been under no illusions as to the cause, and the danger it presented. Various rumours flew around – mentioned in passing by some chroniclers and even aired in public some years later by Philip Hurepel – that the king had been poisoned by Theobald, but as the count had been gone over a month and Louis had spent that time sharing a camp with an army packed with diseased men living in cramped and unsanitary conditions, there can be little doubt that he was suffering from dysentery. He tried to hide it as long as he could, riding on in grim determination so as not to affect the morale of the host, but by the time they arrived at the castle of Montpensier on 3 November 1226 he was suffering greatly and was taken to a bed to rest. Doctors were summoned, but everyone knew there was little they could do.

As the days went by it became clear that Louis was unlikely to recover. There were urgent matters to attend to: the king needed to make a last testament in front of as many high-ranking witnesses as possible. The archbishop of Reims was dead and Guérin, the elderly chancellor, had already returned to Paris ahead of Louis. It was too late to summon anyone else, so decisions would have to be made by those who were on the spot: Philip Hurepel, Amaury de Montfort, the chamberlain Ours de la Chapelle, the marshal John Clément and the archbishop of Sens were among those who swore that they would crown as soon as possible Louis’s eldest son Louis, or if he had died – for who knew what had happened in Paris since the last communication from the capital? – then his second son Robert. They affirmed that they had sworn this oath in Louis’s presence. Young Louis was only twelve, so a regent would need to be named: by custom this would have been the nearest male relative to the child king – in this case Philip Hurepel – but Louis, ‘in agony but still of sound mind’, according to the testimony of three bishops, named Blanche.

The testament was complete. Louis would never see his beloved family again and he could do nothing more for them except to pray that they would survive his loss.

The doctors apparently had one last ploy. In a possibly apocryphal tale told by William of Puylaurens, they decided that such an excess of chastity as the king had demonstrated while he was on campaign was hindering his recovery. The solution was for him to deflower a virgin, so they found a suitable young woman and placed her in his bed while he was asleep. When Louis awoke he demanded to know what she was doing there; upon hearing the explanation he thanked her but declined, as he would rather die than commit a mortal sin and live as an adulterer who dishonoured his wife in such a way. Faithful to Blanche until the end, his mind remained clear enough for him to make a confession and receive absolution before he breathed his last on 8 November 1226.

At the age of thirty-nine, Louis was dead.