ed the same policy. The ecclesiastical chapter of
Bourges, having elected an archbishop without his consent, he
proclaimed the election to be invalid, and took severe and
prompt measures against the refractory clergy. Thibault count
de Champagne took up arms in defence of the Papal authority,
and entrenched himself in the town of Vitry. Louis
immediately took the field to chastise the rebel, and he
besieged the town with so much vigour that the count was
forced to surrender. Upwards of thirteen hundred of the
inhabitants, fully one half of whom were women and children,
took refuge in the church; and, when the gates of the city
were opened, and all resistance had ceased, Louis inhumanly
gave orders to set fire to the sacred edifice, and a thousand
persons perished in the flames.

The command of the army was offered to St. Bernard; but he wisely refused
to accept a station for which his habits had unqualified him. After
consecrating Louis with great solemnity, at St. Denis, as chief of the
expedition, he continued his course through the country, stirring up the
people wherever he went. So high an opinion was entertained of his
sanctity, that he was thought to be animated by the spirit of prophecy,
and to be gifted with the power of working miracles. Many women, excited
by his eloquence, and encouraged by his predictions, forsook their
husbands and children, and, clothing themselves in male attire, hastened
to the war. St. Bernard himself wrote a letter to the Pope detailing his
success, and stating, that in several towns there did not remain a single
male inhabitant capable of bearing arms, and that every where castles and
towns were to be seen filled with women weeping for their absent husbands.
But in spite of this apparent enthusiasm, the numbers who really took up
arms were inconsiderable, and not to be compared to the swarms of the
first Crusade. A levy of no more than two hundred thousand men, which was
the utmost the number amounted to, could hardly have depopulated a country
like France, to the extent mentioned by St. Bernard. His description of
the state of the country appears, therefore, to have been much more
poetical than true.

Suger, the able minister of Louis, endeavoured to dissuade him from
undertaking so long a journey at a time when his own dominions so much
needed his presence. But the