and thus in fact be king _de facto_. It was this which he
achieved upon the battlefield of Lewes in 1264.

For some ten years before that battle the Barons of England had been
restless under the yoke of the central government, the Crown, which
stood not for them but for us all. They had already wrung from Henry
III. under compulsion, when he was within their power and not a free
agent, certain concessions which now he refused to confirm to them.
They called him liar and covered him with the same abuse that their
successors hurled at Charles I.; but Henry stood firm, he refused
what had been dragged from him by force, and Simon de Montfort, Earl
of Leicester, raised an army not from the people but from his own
feudal adherents and his friends and took the field, striking into the
valley of the Severn, where he seized Hereford, Gloucester, Worcester
and Bridgnorth with their castles. Then he marched straight upon
London where, among the Guilds, he had many adherents and friends. War
seemed inevitable, but, as it happened, a truce was called, and the
question which Simon had made an excuse for his rising, the question
of the King's refusal to confirm the grant of privileges wrung from
him by force, was submitted for decision to St Louis of France,
undoubtedly the most reverent, famous, and splendid figure of that
day. St Louis, unlike an Englishman, decided not with a view to peace
as though justice were nothing and right an old wives' tale, but
according to law and his conscience, honestly and cleanly before God
like an intelligent being. Of two things one, either the King was
right or he was wrong. St Louis decided that the King was right, and
this upon January 23rd, 1264.

Simon refused to abide by the decision. This man in his own conception
was above law and honour and justice, he was the inspired and
privileged servant of God. In this hallucination he deceived himself
even as Oliver Cromwell did later and equally for his own ends. He,
too, would break the Crown and himself govern England. He, too, was
brutal beyond bearing, proud and insolent with his inferiors,
imperious even to God, a great man, but one impossible to suffer in
any state which is to endure, a dangerous tyrant.

This great mystical soldier at once took the field, and when Henry
returned from Amiens, where the court of St Louis had sat, he found
all England up, the Cinque Ports all hot for Simon, London ponderous
in his support, and in all south-e