ver the French king promised to pay to Henry the
sums necessary to maintain for two years five hundred knights to be
employed "for the service of God, or the Church, or the kingdom of
England."[1]

[1] For the treaty and its execution see M. Gavrilovitch,
_Etude sur le traite de Paris de 1259_ (1899).

The treaty was unpopular both in France and England. The French
strongly objected to the surrender of territory, and were but little
convinced of the advantage gained by making the English king once more
the vassal of France. English opinion was hostile to the abandonment of
large pretensions in return for so small an equivalent. On the French
side it is true that Louis sacrificed something to his sense of justice
and love of peace. But the territory he ceded was less in reality than
in appearance. The French king's demesnes in Quercy, Perigord, and
Limousin were not large, and the transference of the homage of the
chief vassals meant only a nominal change of overlordship, and was
further limited by a provision that certain "privileged fiefs" were
still to be retained under the direct suzerainty of the French crown.
As to the eventual cessions, Alfonse and his wife were still alive and
likely to live many years. Even the cession of Gascony was hampered by
a stipulation that the towns should take an "oath of security," by
which they pledged themselves to aid France against England in the
event of the English king breaking the provisions of the treaty.
Perhaps the most solid advantage Henry gained by the treaty was
financial, for he spent the sums granted to enable him to redeem his
crusading vow in preparing for war against his own subjects. It was,
however, an immense advantage for England to be able during the
critical years which followed to be free from French hostility. If,
therefore, the French complaints against the treaty were exaggerated,
the English dissatisfaction was unreasonable. The real difficulty for
the future lay in the fact that the possession of Gascony by the king
of a hostile nation was incompatible with the proper development of the
French monarchy. For fifty years, however, a chronic state of war had
not given Gascony to the French; and Louis IX. was, perhaps, politic as
well as scrupulous in abandoning the way of force and beginning a new
method of gradual absorption, that in the end gained the Gascon fief
for France more effectively than any conquest. The treaty of Paris was
not a final