r excelled him in
genius and prowess--as wise rulers in peace and mighty chiefs in
war--his saintliness, his patience in affliction, his respect for
justice and the rights of his neighbours, entitle him to a high place
among the men of the age which could boast of so many royal heroes. In
order to comprehend the crusade, of which he was leader, it is necessary
to refer briefly to the character and career of the good and pious king,
who, in the midst of disaster and danger, exhibited the courage of a
hero and the resignation of a martyr.

It was on the day of the Festival of St. Mark, in the year 1215, that
Blanche of Castille, wife of the eighth Louis of France, gave birth, at
Poissy, to an heir to the crown, which Hugh Capet had, three centuries
earlier, taken from the feeble heir of Charlemagne. On the death of his
father, Louis, then in his twelfth year, became King of France, at a
time when it required a man with a strong hand to maintain the
privileges of the crown against the great nobles of the kingdom.
Fortunately for the young monarch Providence had blessed him with a
mother, who, whatever her faults and failings--and chroniclers have not
spared her reputation--brought to the terrible task of governing in a
feudal age a high spirit and a strong will, and applied herself
earnestly to the duty of bringing up her son in the way in which he
should walk, and educating him in such a manner as to prepare him for
executing the high functions which he was destined to fulfil. While,
with the aid of her chivalrous admirer, the Count of Champagne, and the
counsel of a cardinal-legate--with whom, by-the-bye, she was accused of
being somewhat too familiar--Blanche of Castille maintained the rights
of the French monarchy against the great vassals of France, she reared
her son with the utmost care. She entrusted his education to excellent
masters, appointed persons eminent for piety to attend to his religious
instruction, and evinced profound anxiety that he should lead a virtuous
and holy life.

'Rather,' she once said, 'would I see my son in his grave, than learn
that he had committed a mortal sin.'

As time passed on, Blanche of Castille had the gratification of finding
that her toil and her anxiety were not in vain. Lotus, indeed, was a
model whom other princes, in their teens, would have done well to copy.
His piety, and his eagerness to do what was right and to avoid what was
wrong, raised the wonder of his contempora