Gloucester, the
chief leaders among them, began to disjoint the whole confederacy.
The latter, more moderate in his pretensions, was desirous of stopping
or retarding the career of the barons' usurpations; but the former,
enraged at the opposition which he met with in his own party,
pretended to throw up all concern in English affairs, and he retired
into France [i].
[FN [h] Ann. Burt. p. 428, 439. [i] Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 348.]

The kingdom of France, the only state with which England had any
considerable intercourse, was at this time governed by Lewis IX., a
prince of the most singular character that is to be met with in all
the records of history. This monarch united, to the mean and abject
superstition of a monk, all the courage and magnanimity of the
greatest hero; and, what may be deemed more extraordinary, the justice
and integrity of a disinterested patriot, the mildness and humanity of
an accomplished philosopher. So far from taking advantage of the
divisions among the English, or attempting to expel those dangerous
rivals from the provinces which they still possessed in France, he had
entertained many scruples with regard to the sentence of attainder
pronounced against the king's father, had even expressed some
intention of restoring the other provinces, and was only prevented
from taking that imprudent resolution by the united remonstrances of
his own barons, who represented the extreme danger of such a measure
[k], and, what had a greater influence on Lewis, the justice of
punishing, by a legal sentence, the barbarity and felony of John.
Whenever this prince interposed in English affairs, it was always with
an intention of composing the differences between the king and his
nobility; he recommended to both parties every peaceable and
reconciling measure; and he used all his authority with the Earl of
Leicester, his native subject, to bend him to compliance with Henry.
[MN 20th May.] He made a treaty with England, at a time when the
distractions of that kingdom were at the greatest height, and when the
king's authority was totally annihilated; and the terms which he
granted might, even in a more prosperous state of their affairs, be
deemed reasonable and advantageous to the English. He yielded up some
territories which had been conquered from Poictou and Guienne; he
ensured the peaceable possession of the latter province to Henry; he
agreed to pay that prince a large sum of money; and he only require