from which he was dragged to be burned in solemn state. This
was Louis VIII.'s last exploit in Southern France. He was displeased
with the pope, whom he reproached with not keeping all his promises; his
troops were being decimated by sickness; and he was deserted by Theobald
IV., Count of Champagne, after serving, according to feudal law, for
forty days.

Louis, incensed, disgusted, and ill, himself left his army, to return to
his own Northern France; but he never reached it, for fever compelled him
to halt at Montpensier, in Auvergne, where he died on the 8th of
November, 1226, after a reign of three years, adding to the history of
France no glory save that of having been the son of Philip Augustus, the
husband of Blanche of Castille, and the father of St. Louis.

We have already perused the most brilliant and celebrated amongst the
events of St. Louis's reign, his two crusades against the Mussulmans; and
we have learned to know the man at the same time with the event, for it
was in these warlike outbursts of his Christian faith that the king's
character, nay, his whole soul, was displayed in all its originality and
splendor. It was his good fortune, moreover, to have at that time as his
comrade and biographer, Sire de Joinville, one of the most sprightly and
charming writers of the nascent French language. It is now of Louis in
France and of his government at home that we have to take note. And in
this part of his history he is not the only royal and really regnant
personage we encounter: for of the forty-four years of St. Louis's reign,
nearly fifteen, with a long interval of separation, pertained to the
government of Queen Blanche of Castille rather than that of the king her
son. Louis, at his accession in 1226, was only eleven; and he remained a
minor up to the age of twenty-one, in 1236, for the time of majority in
the case of royalty was not yet specially and rigorously fixed. During
those ten years Queen Blanche governed France; not at all, as is commonly
asserted, with the official title of regent, but simply as guardian of
the king her son. With a good sense really admirable in a person so
proud and ambitious, she saw that official power was ill suited to her
woman's condition, and would weaken rather than strengthen her; and she
screened herself from view behind her son. He it was who, in 1226, wrote
to the great vassals, bidding them to his consecration; he it was who
reigned and commanded; and his