Louis: The French Prince Who Invaded England (28 page)

AFTERMATH

T
HIS WAS NOT
the homecoming Louis had envisaged.

No cheering crowds thronged the quay, hoping for a glimpse of the English crown; no welcoming party knelt to a new king. Instead Louis and his companions simply disembarked, mounted their horses and began the journey of several days which would take them back to Paris. As Louis rode through the French countryside, a hive of activity at the end of the harvest season, he had plenty of time to consider his future. For almost a year and a half he had been in charge, had lived and governed on his own terms, but now he was back to playing the understudy, the heir, the king-in-waiting. It must have been galling, to say the least, but as pragmatic as he was he accepted that there was no choice. He would bend the knee to his father – which is exactly what he did when he arrived in Paris, although we have no way of knowing whether his teeth were gritted at the time – and over the next few years he would show a remarkable patience with his lot.

There were, of course, advantages arising from his campaign and his present circumstances. He may not have won the English crown, but he had done enough to ensure that England would be in no position to challenge or threaten France and the French monarchy for years to come. The last years of Philip’s reign (for surely even he could not live forever) would not be marked by the incursions of an English king as his first years on the throne had been; and when the time came for his own accession, Louis would not need to fight off invaders on his own soil.

On a more personal level, Louis was also now reunited with his wife and sons, which must have given them all great joy. And it was through Blanche (or, more specifically, due to her ancestry) that another staggering offer arrived soon after his return: as Louis and Blanche were not to be king and queen of England, perhaps they would consider taking the throne of Castile?

Blanche’s father, King Alfonso VIII, had died in 1214, to be succeeded by his youngest child and only surviving son, Henry, then aged nine; Henry’s eldest sister Berengaria (formerly queen of León but now separated from her husband Alfonso IX and living back in Castile) acted as his regent. But the unfortunate boy was killed in an accident just three years after his accession when he was hit by a tile which fell from the roof of the royal palace. The crown then passed by hereditary right to Berengaria; she in turn immediately resigned it in favour of her sixteen-year-old son, who became Ferdinand III of Castile. However, this move was unpopular both with the pope (who considered Ferdinand illegitimate as Berengaria and her former husband had not sought the correct papal dispensation for a marriage which was consanguineous), and also with the Castilian nobles, who feared undue interference from León, Ferdinand being the heir to that throne as well. They unearthed a proviso whereby Alfonso VIII had decreed that should his son Henry die childless, the crown should pass to his daughter Blanche and her successors. Therefore, in the autumn of 1217 the Castilian crown was offered first to Blanche, and then to her and Louis for one of their sons if they would choose one and send him south.

A sense of déjà vu was in the air. Did Louis wish to become embroiled in another foreign campaign, after being offered a crown in right of his wife, who had a blood claim but was not the nearest heir? Did he wish to involve himself in the world of Castilian politics? He did not, and from the available evidence it would appear that Blanche did not press him on the point. Perhaps she now considered herself more Capetian than Castilian; she had, after all, spent rather more than half her life in France. She would be queen there and she was bringing up her sons in the French royal tradition. And so the offer of the crown was declined, firmly, by the whole family. Far from being bitter about the lost opportunity and regretting their decision in future years, Louis and Blanche had a very cordial relationship with Ferdinand, and indeed welcomed with all honour his betrothed, Beatrice of Swabia, as their guest in Paris in 1219. Ferdinand III went on to become one of the most successful Castilian kings, reigning for over thirty years, uniting the kingdoms of Castile and León, and leading great advances against the Moors in Spain, for which he was eventually canonised as St Ferdinand.

And so Louis and Blanche’s lives proceeded for now unencumbered by a crown. They settled into something of a routine: their court was once again a literary hub; they accompanied the king on some of his peregrinations. It appears that they lived in a state of some domestic bliss: without exception every chronicle or account of Louis’s life confirms that he never took a mistress – not even when he was away for over a year in England, despite suggestions from his companions – which was unusual for a man in his position at the time. His faith meant that he took his marriage vows seriously; he must also have been glad to be able to attend church services again now that his excommunication was lifted. Both Louis and Blanche were involved in teaching and guiding their sons: in subsequent years, as we shall see later, one of their children would be canonised as a saint and another would be beatified, and accounts of their lives credit their family background and upbringing as major factors in their saintliness.

But the bliss was not to continue for long. Tragedy struck in the summer of 1218 when Louis and Blanche’s eldest son and heir Philip died shortly before his ninth birthday. He was just at the age when a noble boy would have moved away from the female-led care of his early life and started to undertake more masculine pursuits, but as his cause of death was not recorded (child mortality was, as we have seen, an occurrence so common that it was almost a part of everyday life) we have no way of knowing whether he met his end by illness or by accident. He was buried in the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, then still under construction. The loss of their son was a tragedy for the family and it also dealt a blow to France’s future, the country having had great expectations of Philip: one unofficial record of his short existence appears in the margin of a document of the royal chancellery, where sometime between 1213 and 1218 a scribe jotted the words ‘in the Year of Our Lord 1209, the ninth day of September, Blanche, once again a mother, gave birth to a son. This birth, so wished-for, gives a master to the French and the English.’

However heartbreaking Philip’s death was for his family, it was not the disaster for the royal line of succession that it could have been. Louis and Blanche’s next eldest surviving son Louis, aged four, became the heir; he had a two-year-old brother Robert as back-up; and now that Louis and Blanche were reunited and still relatively young (they were both thirty), they could have more children. The loss of young Philip did have a secondary consequence, however, which was that his betrothed, Agnes de Donzy – daughter of the loose cannon Hervé de Donzy, and heiress to the counties of Nevers, Auxerre and Tonnere – was now back on the marriage market and available to provide a husband with a rich prize. It was therefore important that this husband was the right man. King Philip acted quickly, and (probably with encouragement from Louis) Agnes was married off to Guy de Châtillon, one of Louis’s oldest and closest friends, a loyal servant of the crown, and the heir to the county of St Pol.

King Philip was still in robust health, and Louis could not expect to accede to the throne any time soon. But after a year back in France he was itching for more action, so he was no doubt pleased when an opportunity presented itself in the autumn of 1218.

* * *

The Albigensian crusade had been continuing unabated while Louis was in England. Despite the gains of Simon de Montfort which we recounted in an earlier chapter, the southerners never accepted that their cause was lost, and a fightback under Raymond (formerly Raymond VI, count of Toulouse, until his lands were officially bestowed on Simon) and his son Raymond the younger ensued. Raymond junior was turning out to be a very capable military leader and he made substantial gains, including the capture of the town and fortress of Beaucaire. Raymond the elder, who had been in Aragon for much of 1216 and 1217, was able to return to Languedoc in September 1217, just as Louis was arriving back in France, and to occupy the great southern city of Toulouse.

Simon de Montfort began the siege of Toulouse in October 1217. He encountered fierce and sometimes vicious resistance and doggedly remained there all through the winter of 1217 and the spring and early summer of 1218. On 25 June that year he was killed by a stone shot from a petrary mounted on the walls, which was being operated by women and girls from the city – every inhabitant was involved in the defence. The continuation part of the
Song of the Cathar Wars
, which gives a very detailed account of the siege, describes graphically the effects of being struck by such a missile: ‘A stone arrived just where it was needed and struck Count Simon on his steel helmet, shattering his eyes, brains, back teeth, forehead and jaw. Bleeding and black, the count dropped dead on the ground.’ The siege was lifted, the Toulousians celebrated, and leadership of the crusade against them fell into the hands of Simon’s eldest son, Amaury de Montfort, who was then around twenty-three and who had already been part of the campaign for many years. But things were not to go smoothly. Simon had been an experienced and successful soldier and an inspirational leader to his troops; his death meant not just a military setback but also a huge loss of morale and the seeding of doubts among the crusaders – after all, was God not supposed to be on their side against the heretics? If so, why had He allowed this to happen? In the immediate aftermath of Simon’s death the crusade lost ground.

On 12 August 1218 Pope Honorius wrote a letter to Philip Augustus to urge him to send help to Amaury de Montfort, in the form of an army led by Louis; on 13 August he wrote to Louis himself with the same request. Louis, predictably, was keen to undertake the campaign; Philip was less sure and sent no formal reply one way or the other. In September Honorius tried another approach and wrote again to Philip, saying that he would underwrite all the costs of the campaign, but Philip was still not convinced. His official truce with England (agreed with John in 1215; Louis’s invasion was not considered to have broken the truce as it was not backed by Philip) was due to expire in 1220 and the minority of Henry III might provide some interesting opportunities for gain – but not if all Philip’s resources were deployed elsewhere. This truce, incidentally, would be extended; both Louis (‘his very dear and faithful eldest son’) and Frederick II the Holy Roman Emperor (‘if he wishes to be included’) are named specifically in the terms, showing Philip’s control or influence over both of them, but also recognition of Louis as a force in his own right.

However, Honorius was not finished yet and had another trick up his sleeve. Bypassing Philip, he offered leadership of the crusade directly to Theobald IV, count of Champagne (who, we might recall, was placed as a baby in the household of Louis and Blanche after being born after the death of his father, Theobald III; he was now in his late teens and approaching his majority). This goaded Philip into action: he might not be keen to commit himself to the crusade, but he certainly did not want to lose control of the campaign to a powerful vassal: the count of Champagne was one of the richest and most influential noblemen in France, and as well as a dash of French royal blood (his paternal grandmother had been Marie, daughter of Louis VII and his first wife Eleanor of Aquitaine) Theobald had other potential interests in the south due to a claim to the crown of Navarre via his mother. Philip accepted Honorius’s offer on 19 November 1218 and Louis wasted no time in pledging himself, as Peter of Les-Vaux-de-Cernay tells us:

On 20 November in the Year of Our Lord 1218 Louis, the illustrious eldest son of the King of France, took the cross, for the glory of God and the suppression of heresy in the Toulouse area, with the willing assent of his father. Inspired by his example many powerful French nobles also took the cross.

Louis began his preparations. The mustering of men and supplies naturally took some time and much of Louis’s energy over the winter, and it was 15 May 1219 before his forces set off. As a designated crusade backed by papal authority, his army was packed with Church representatives: bishops, archbishops and abbots, including Guérin, bishop of Senlis, Philip Augustus’s closest counsellor, and Bertrand, the papal legate to France. Louis was naturally also accompanied by his friends, among them Peter de Dreux of Brittany and Guy de Châtillon, as well as renowned fighters such as William des Roches of Anjou.

Instead of heading down the Rhône valley, as he had done in 1215, Louis and his host went through Poitou and Limousin. Their pace was slow: ‘They brought carts, mules and pack-beasts, tents, pavilions, victuals and money, and travelled in short stages to let those at the rear keep up,’ says the anonymous continuer of the
Song of the Cathar Wars
. They reached Marmande (a town some 50 miles or 80 km south-east of Bordeaux) in early June to meet up with Amaury de Montfort, who had been besieging it for several months.

As might be expected, the influx of a large and fresh force turned the tide; Louis had been there only a day or two when the ditches around the fortification were filled in and the barriers broken down. The leader of the defenders, Count Centule of Astarac, emerged to surrender and was taken to Louis’s tent. There, says the
Song of the Cathar Wars
, ‘the prelates of the Church attended upon the king [meaning Louis] and the barons of France took their seats before him. The king sat on a silken cushion and folded his right glove, rich with gold embroidery,’ as he prepared to hear Centule’s case. The atmosphere was tense, as ‘everyone listened for the others to speak’.