is best of kings, and of men, would
have been surprised had he been told that he was preparing the way for
the greatest tragedy in history; that he was creating an absolute
despotism which five hundred years later would require a revolution of
unprecedented horror for its removal. Such was the fact. Every wise
act in this reign was prompted by the spirit of fairness and justice.
And if at the same time these acts were drawing all the forces in the
state to a central point, under the control of a single hand, it was
the best development for France under existing conditions.

Saint though he was, and almost fanatic in his devotion to the Church,
Louis resisted the pope or the bishop, if unjust, with as much energy
as one of his own barons; and, in the same spirit of fairness, would
punish his own too zealous defenders who had infringed upon the feudal
rights of the peerage.

This was Louis the king. But it is Louis the saint who holds the eye
on the world's canvas. The real life was to him the life of the soul.
Francis Assisi himself did not live in an atmosphere of greater
spiritual exaltation than this devout and heavenly grandson of Philip
Augustus! No monk in the Dark Ages attached such sanctity to relics!
When a portion of the crown of thorns was sent to him from Jerusalem,
he built that exquisite _Sainte Chapelle_ for its reception; and
barefooted, bare-headed, carried it himself in solemn procession from
Vincennes to Paris, placing it with reverent hands in that shrine we
may visit to-day.

Christian knighthood had reached its one perfect flower in Louis; and
the Crusades fittingly closed with the life of the most saintly
crusader. His first Crusade was disastrous, occupying years of his
life; his mother, Blanche of Castile, dying during his absence. His
second and last was more costly still. Near the ruins of Carthage,
where he was in conflict with a Mohometan band, he was stricken with
fever and died (1270).

Louis's brother, Charles of Anjou, is said to have led him into this
fatal attempt, for his own purposes. Charles, of very different
memory, was at this time, by invitation of the pope, occupying the
double throne of Naples and Sicily. And he it was who provoked by his
cruelties that frightful outbreak known as the "Sicilian Vespers," in
1283.

The Crusades had lasted from 1095 to 1270. The purpose for which they
were undertaken had signally failed. Jerusalem, captured in the first
Crusade