On the 24th of March 1267, Louis called to Paris such of his knights as were not with Charles of Anjou in Naples. No one knew why he had called them; but when the king in full assembly proclaimed his purpose of going on a second crusade, few ventured to refuse the cross. Three years of preparation followed; then on the 1st of July 1270 they sailed from Aigues Mortes for Tunis, whither the expedition seems to have been directed by the machinations of Charles of Anjou, who, it is claimed, persuaded his brother that the key to Egypt and to Jerusalem was that part of Africa which was his own most dangerous neighbour. After seventeen days' voyage to Carthage, one month of the summer's heat and plague decimated the army, and when Charles of Anjou arrived he found that Louis himself had died of the plague on the 25th of August 1270.
Saint Louis stands in history as the ideal king of the middle ages. An accomplished knight, physically strong in spite of his ascetic practices, fearless in battle, heroic in adversity, of imperious temperament, unyielding when sure of the justness of his cause, energetic and firm, he was indeed "every inch a king." Joinville says that he was taller by a head than any of his knights. His devotions would have worn out a less robust saint. He fasted much, loved sermons, regularly heard two masses a day and all the offices, dressing at midnight for matins in his chapel, and surrounded even when he travelled by priests on horseback chanting the hours. After his return from the first crusade, he wore only grey woollens in winter, dark silks in summer. He built hospitals, visited and tended the sick himself, gave charity to over a hundred beggars daily. Yet he safeguarded the royal dignity by bringing them in at the back door of the palace, and by a courtly display greater than ever before in France. His naturally cold temperament was somewhat relieved by a sense of humour, which however did not prevent his making presents of haircloth shirts to his friends. He had no favourite, nor prime minister. Louis was canonized in 1297.
As a statesman Louis IX. has left no distinct monument. The famous "Etablissements of St Louis" has been shown in our own day to have been private compilation. It was a coutumier drawn up before 1273, including, as well as some royal decrees, the civil and feudal law of Anjou, Maine and the Orleanais. Recent researches have also denied Louis the credit of having aided the communes. He exploited them to the full. His standpoint in this respect was distinctly feudal. He treated his clergy as he did his barons, enforcing the supremacy of royal justice, and strongly opposing the exactions of the pope until the latter part of his reign, when he joined forces with him to extort as much as possible from the clergy. At the end of the reign most of the sees and monasteries of France were in debt to the Lombard bankers. Finally, the reign of Saint Louis saw the introduction of the pontifical inquisition into France. There are numerous portraits of St Louis, but they are unauthentic and contradictory. In 1903 M. Salomon Reinach claimed to have found in the heads sculptured in the angles of the arches of the chapel at St Germain portraits of St Louis, his brothers and sisters, and Queen Marguerite, or Blanche, made between 1235 and 1240. This conjectured portrait somewhat resembles the modern type, which is based upon a statue of Charles V. once in the church of the Celestins in Paris, and which Lenoir mistakenly identified as that of Louis IX. The king had eleven children, six sons and five daughters, among them being his successor, Philip III., and Robert, count of Clermont, the ancestor of Henry IV.
The best contemporary accounts of Louis IX. are the famous Memoirs of
the Sire Jean de Joinville, published by N. de Wailly for the Soc. de
l'Hist. de France, under the title Histoire de Saint Louis
(Paris, 1868), and again with translation (1874); English translation by
J. Hutton (1868). See also William of Nangis, Gesta Ludovici IX.,
edited by M. Bouquet in vol. xx. of the Recueil des historiens des
Gaules et de la France. Of modern works may be mentioned C. V.
Langlois in E. Lavisse's Histoire de France, tome iii., with
references to literature; Frederick Perry, Saint Louis, the Most
Christian King (New York, 1901); E. J. Davis, The Invasion of
Egypt by Louis IX. of France (1898); H. A. Walton, Saint Louis et
son temps (1875); A. Lecoy de la Marche, Saint Louis (Tours,
1891); and E. Berger, Saint Louis et Innocent IV (Paris, 1893),
and Histoire de Blanche de Castille (1895). See also The Court
of a Saint, by Winifred F. Knox (1909). (J. T. S.*)
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