ad among the ecclesiastical ranks. [Sidenote:
St. Louis.] St. Louis, the representative of the hierarchical party,
gathers influence only from the circumstance of his relations with
the Church, of whose interests he was a fanatical supporter. So far
as the affairs of his people were concerned, he can hardly be looked
upon as anything better than a simpleton. His reliance for checking
the threatened spread of heresy was a resort to violence--the faggot
and the sword. In his opinion, "A man ought never to dispute with
a misbeliever except with his sword, which he ought to drive into
the heretic's entrails as far as he can." It was the signal glory
of his reign that he secured for France that inestimable relic,
the crown of thorns. [Sidenote: His superstition,] This peerless
memento of our Saviour's passion he purchased in Constantinople
for an immense sum. But France was doubly and enviably enriched;
for the Abbey of St. Denys was in possession of another, known to
be equally authentic! Besides the crown, he also secured the sponge
that was dipped in vinegar; the lance of the Roman soldier; also the
swaddling-clothes in which the Saviour had first lain in the manger;
the rod of Moses; and part of the skull of John the Baptist. These
treasures he deposited in the "Holy Chapel" of Paris.

[Sidenote: and crusade.] Under the papal auspices, St. Louis determined
on a crusade; and nothing, except what we have already mentioned, can
better show his mental imbecility than his disregard of all suitable
arrangements for it. He thought that, provided the troops could be made
to lead a religious life, all would go well; that the Lord would fight
his own battles, and that no provisions of a military or worldly kind
were needed. In such a pious reliance on the support of God, he reached
Egypt with his expedition in June, A.D. 1249. The ever-conspicuous
valour of the French troops could maintain itself in the battle-field,
but not against pestilence and famine. [Sidenote: Its total failure.] In
March of the following year, as might have been foreseen, King Louis was
the prisoner of the Sultan, and was only spared the indignity of being
carried about as a public spectacle in the Mohammedan towns by a ransom,
at first fixed at a million of Byzantines, but by the merciful Sultan
voluntarily reduced one fifth. Still, for a time, Louis lingered in the
East, apparently stupefied by considering how God could in this manner
have abandoned a man