annies,
in order to put in its place pure monarchy, and to exalt the kingly
authority above all liberties, whether of the aristocracy or of the
people. St. Louis neither thought of nor attempted anything of the kind;
he did not make war, at one time openly, at another secretly, upon the
feudal system; he frankly accepted its principles, as he found them
prevailing in the facts and the ideas of his times. Whilst fully bent on
repressing with firmness his vassals' attempts to shake themselves free
from their duties towards him, and to render themselves independent of
the crown, he respected their rights, kept his word to them scrupulously,
and required of them nothing but what they really owed him. Into his
relations with foreign sovereigns, his neighbors, he imported the same
loyal spirit. "Certain of his council used to tell him," reports
Joinville, "that he did not well in not leaving those foreigners to their
warfare; for, if he gave them his good leave to impoverish one another,
they would not attack him so readily as if they were rich. To that the
king replied that they said not well; for, quoth he, if the neighboring
princes perceived that I left them to their warfare, they might take
counsel amongst themselves, and say, 'It is through malice that the king
leaves us to our warfare; then it might happen that by cause of the
hatred they would have against me, they would come and attack me, and I
might be a great loser there-by. Without reckoning that I should thereby
earn the hatred of God, who says, 'Blessed be the peacemakers!' So well
established was his renown as a sincere friend of peace and a just
arbiter in great disputes between princes and peoples that his
intervention and his decisions were invited wherever obscure and
dangerous questions arose. In spite of the brilliant victories which, in
1212, he had gained at Taillebourg and Saintes over Henry III., King of
England, he himself perceived, on his return from the East, that the
conquests won by his victories might at any moment become a fresh cause
of new and grievous wars, disastrous, probably, for one or the other of
the two peoples. He conceived, therefore, the design of giving to a
peace which was so desirable a more secure basis by founding it upon a
transaction accepted on both sides as equitable. And thus, whilst
restoring to the King of England certain possessions which the war of
1242 had lost to him, he succeeded in obtaining from him in