Part 54

In return, they required the King to say that, if he broke his oath, he should be as one who denied his religion; but the words in which this was couched seemed to Louis so profane, that he utterly refused to pronounce them.

The Mahometans threatened.

“You are masters of my body,” he said, “but you have no power over my will.” His brothers and the clergy entreated in vain, though the Mamelukes, fancying that his resistance was inspired by the latter, seized the Patriarch of Jerusalem, an old man of eighty, and tied him up to a stake, drawing the cords so tight round his hands that the blood started.

“Sire, sire, take the oath!” he cried; “I take the sin upon myself.”

But Louis was immovable, and the Emirs at last contented themselves with his word, and retired, saying that this was the proudest Christian that had ever been seen in the East.

They knew not that his pride was for the honor of his God.

On the 6th of May, Geoffroi de Sargines came to Damietta, placed the Queen and her ladies on board the Genoese vessels, and gave up the keys to the Emirs.

The King was, on this, set free, but his brother Alfonso was to remain as a hostage till the bezants were paid. The royal coffers at Damielta could not supply the whole, and the rest was borrowed of the Templars, somewhat by force; for Joinville, going to their treasurer in his worn-out garments and his face haggard from illness, was refused the keys, till he said “he should use the royal key,” on which, with a protest, the chests were opened.

Philippe de Montfort managed to cheat the Mamelukes of 10,000 bezants, and came boasting of it to the King; but Louis, much displeased, sent him back with the remaining sum.

The King then embarked, still in much anxiety whether the Emirs would fulfil their engagements and liberate his brother; but, late at night, Montfort came alongside of the vessel, and called out, “Sire, speak to your brother, who is in the other ship!”

In great joy Louis cried, “Light up! light up!” and the signals of the two princes joyfully answered each other in the darkness.

The King sailed for Acre, and after some stay there, finding that his weakened force could effect nothing, and hearing that the death of his mother, Queen Blanche, had left France without a regent, he returned home, and landed 5th of September, 1254, six years after his departure.

The Countess Ella and her son Nicholas, Bishop of Salisbury, raised an effigy to William like that of his father, and the figures of the father and son lie opposite to each other in the new cathedral founded by Bishop Poore.

CAMEO XXX. SIMON DE MONTFORT. (1232-1266.)

King of England. 1216. Henry III.

Kings of Scotland. 1214. Alexander II. 1249. Alexander III.

Kings of France. 1226. Louis IX.

Emperor of Germany. 1209. Friedrich II. 1249. Conrad IV. 1255. William.

Popes. 1227. Gregory IX. 1241. Celestin IV. 1242. Innocent IV. 1254. Alexander IV. 1261. Urban IV.

The lawlessness of John Lackland led to the enactment of Magna Charta; the extravagance of Henry of Winchester established the power of Parliament, and the man who did most in effecting this purpose was a foreigner by birth.

Amicia, the heiress of the earldom of Leicester, was the wife of Simon, Count de Montfort, an austere warrior, on whom fell the choice of Innocent III. to be leader of the so-called crusade against the unfortunate Albigenses. Heretics indeed they were; but never before had the sword of persecution been employed by the Church, and their fate is a grievous disgrace to Rome, and to the Dominican order. Strict in life, but of cruel temper, Count Simon was a fit instrument for the massacres committed; and being a leader of great skill, he gained complete victories over the native princes of the heretics, who, though not holding their opinions, were unwilling to let them perish without protection. Raymond de St. Gilles Count de Toulouse, Gaston Count de Béarn, and all the most famous names of the south of France, took up arms in their defence; and even Pedro, King of Aragon, joined, the confederacy; but at the battle of Muret all were totally defeated, and Pedro lost his life.

The nobles were imprisoned, the peasants murdered by wholesale, villages burnt down and the inhabitants slain, with out distinction of Catholic or heretic, and all the time the followers of Montfort deemed themselves religious men. The Lateran Council actually invested Simon with the sovereignty of the counties of Toulouse and Carcassonne; but he was extremely hated there, and Count Raymond, recovering his liberty, attacked him, and regained great part of his own dominions. Montfort was besieging the town of Toulouse, when, while hearing mass, intelligence was brought to him that the garrison were setting fire to his machines. He rose from his knees, repeating the first verse of the Song of Simeon, and rushing out to the battle, was struck on the head by a stone from a mangonel on the walls, and killed on the spot, June 25, 1218. He was a remarkable type of that character fostered by the system of the Middle Ages, where ambition and cruelty existed side by side with austere devotion, and were encouraged as if they did service to Heaven.

His second son, Simon, had the same strong sense of religion, together with equal talents, and unusual beauty of person, skill in arms, and winning grace of deportment. The elder son, Amaury, was the heir of the county of Montfort, and for some time Simon remained landless, the earldom of Leicester having been forfeited on account of the adherence of the family to the party of Louis the Lion in the wars that followed the signing of Magna Charta.

In 1232, however, young Simon came to England to attempt the recovery of his mother’s inheritance, and his graceful manners and Southern tongue at once delighted Henry III. Another heart was at the same time gained; the King’s sister, Eleanor, who had been left a widow at sixteen by the death of the brave Earl of Pembroke, had, in her first despair, made a vow of perpetual widowhood, and received the ring of dedication from the Archbishop; but at the end of six years all this was forgotten; she fell in love with the handsome Provençal, and prevailed on the King to sanction with his presence a hasty private wedding in St. Stephen’s Chapel.

For some time the marriage remained a secret, and when it became known, great was the indignation alike of clergy and laity. The Barons even collected troops, and headed by Richard, the King’s brother, whom they called the Staff of Fortitude, assembled at Southwark, and dreadfully alarmed the poor King; but Montfort, who always possessed a great power over men’s minds, managed to reconcile himself to Prince Richard, and to disperse the other nobles. Still, the Archbishop termed it no marriage at all, and Simon therefore set out at once for Rome, carrying letters from Henry, and raising money by every means in his power, till he was able to offer a sufficient bribe to obtain from the Pope a dispensation, with which he returned to England a few days before the birth of his eldest child, Henry.

Simon was now in high favor; the Barons, who at first looked on him as one of the hated Southern adventurers, were gained over by his address and adoption of their manners; and when, by the royal favor and the formal cession by his brother Amaury, he obtained the earldom of Leicester, they readily identified him with themselves. At court he was highly beloved; his children were constantly at the palace; and in 1239, when Edward, heir of the crown, was baptized, he was one of the nine godfathers--an honor, perhaps, chiefly owing to his wealth, for this was at one of the times when Henry’s finances were at so low an ebb that he, or his messengers, made the birth of the child an excuse for their rapacity. Each noble to whom the tidings were sent was obliged to make a costly gift; and if he did not offer enough, his present was returned on his hands with intimation that it must be increased. “God has given us this child,” said a jester; “the King sells him to us.”

Montfort’s English popularity seems suddenly to have rendered the fickle King jealous; for, to his great surprise, on the day of the churching of the Queen, Henry suddenly met him, and forbade him to join in the service, reviling him furiously for the circumstances of his marriage, and ordering him at once to leave his dominions. Returning with his wife to his lodgings, he was at once followed by messengers, ordering them both away; and before sunset he was obliged to embark with Eleanor in a small vessel, leaving behind them their infant son.

He placed his wife in safety in France, and proceeded to the Holy Land, where he highly distinguished himself, and, as usual, gained every one’s affection, so that the Barons of Palestine would fain have had him for their leader in the absence of their young Queen Yolande and her husband, Friedrich II. of Germany.