e soldiers of Henry retreated precipitately
to Saintes. There was imminent danger of their retreat being cut off,
but Richard of Cornwall went to the French camp, and obtained an
armistice of a few hours, which gave his brother time to reach the
town.

Next day Louis advanced at his ease to the capital of Saintonge. The
Anglo-Gascons went out to meet him, and, despite their inferior numbers,
fought bravely amidst the vineyards and hollow lanes to the west of the
city. But the English king was the first to flee, and victory soon
attended the arms of the French. Immediately after the battle, the lords
of Poitou abandoned Richard for Alfonse. Henry fled from Saintes to
Pons, from Pons to Barbezieux, and thence sought a more secure refuge at
Blaye, leaving his tent, the ornaments of his chapel, and the beer
provided for his English soldiers as booty for the enemy. The outbreak
of an epidemic in the French army alone prevented a siege of Bordeaux,
by necessitating the return of St. Louis to the healthier north. Henry
lingered at Bordeaux until September, when he returned to England.[1]
Meanwhile the French dictated peace to the remaining allies of Henry. On
the death of Raymond of Toulouse, in 1249, Alfonse quietly succeeded to
his dominions. The next twenty years saw the gradual extension of the
French administrative system to Poitou, Auvergne, and the Toulousain.
English Gascony was reduced to little more than the districts round
Bordeaux and Bayonne. Even a show of hostility was no longer useful, and
on April 7, 1243, a five years' truce between Henry and Louis was signed
at Bordeaux. The marriage of Beatrice of Provence, the youngest of the
daughters of Raymond Berengar, to Charles of Anjou, Louis' younger
brother, removed Provence from the sphere of English influence. On his
father-in-law's death in 1245, Charles of Anjou succeeded to his
dominions to the prejudice of his two English brothers-in-law, and
became the founder of a Capetian line of counts of Provence, which
brought the great fief of the empire under the same northern French
influences which Alfonse of Poitiers was diffusing over the lost
inheritances of Eleanor of Aquitaine and the house of Saint-Gilles.

[1] The only good modern account of this expedition is that by
M. Charles Bemont, _La campagne de Poitou, 1242-3_, in _Annales
du Midi_, v., 389-314 (1893). For the Lusignans see Boissonade,
_Quomodo comites Engolismenses erga reges Anglia