g properly and
directly to the King of France. Ile-de-France, properly so called, and a
part of Orleanness (_l'Oreanais_), pretty nearly the five departments of
the Seine, Seine-et-Oise, Seineet-Marne, Oise and Loiret, besides,
through recent acquisitions, French Vexin (which bordered on the Ile-de-
France and had for its chief place Pontoise, being separated by the
little River Epte from Norman Vexin, of which Rouen was the capital),
half the countship of Sens and the countship of Bourges--such was the
whole of its extent. But this limited state was as liable to agitation,
and often as troublous and as toilsome to govern, as the very greatest of
modern states. It was full of Petty lords, almost sovereigns in their
own estates, and sufficiently strong to struggle against their kingly
suzerain, who had, besides, all around his domains, several neighbors
more powerful than himself in the extent and population of their states.
But lord and peasant, layman and ecclesiastic, castle and country and the
churches of France, were not long discovering that, if the kingdom was
small, it had verily a king. Louis did not direct to a distance from
home his ambition and his efforts; it was within his own dominion, to
check the violence of the strong against the weak, to put a stop to the
quarrels of the strong amongst themselves, to make an end, in France at
least, of unrighteousness and devastation, and to establish there some
sort of order and some sort of justice, that he displayed his energy and
his perseverance. "He was animated," says Suger, "by a strong sense of
equity; to air his courage was his delight; he scorned inaction; he
opened his eyes to see the way of discretion; he broke his rest and was
unwearied in his solicitude." Suger has recounted in detail sixteen of
the numerous expeditions which Louis undertook into the interior, to
accomplish his work of repression or of exemplary chastisement.
Bouchard, Lord of Montmorency, Matthew de Beaumont, Dreux de Mouchy-le-
Chatel, Ebble de Roussi, Leon de Mean, Thomas de Marle, Hugh de Crecy,
William de la Roche-Guyon, Hugh du Puiset, and Amaury de Montfort
learned, to their cost, that the king was not to be braved with impunity.
"Bouchard, on taking up arms one day against him, refused to accept his
sword from the hands of one of his people who offered it to him, and said
by way of boast to the countess his wife, 'Noble countess, give thou
joyously this glittering sword to th