A child king and a strong regent
Louis IX was born in 1214 and became king of France in 1226, when he was about twelve, after the death of his father, Louis VIII. His mother, Blanche of Castile, acted as regent. The early years were not easy: some great nobles tested the new regime, and Blanche had to hold the kingdom together through alliances and military action. By the time Louis took control in his own right in the 1230s, the French monarchy was secure, thanks partly to the groundwork laid by his grandfather Philip II Augustus and partly to his mother’s steady management.
He married Margaret of Provence in 1234, and they had a large family. His brothers received lands that later created new princely houses, an arrangement with long-term consequences that the king may not have fully foreseen.
Justice as a royal duty
Louis is remembered above all for justice. Medieval writers, including his companion Joinville, described him hearing petitions in person, famously under an oak tree at Vincennes. Such scenes are partly literary, but the underlying idea was real: a king was meant to protect the weak and keep order.
In practice this meant building up a system. In 1247 he sent out special officials to travel through the kingdom and hear complaints about the conduct of royal agents, such as bailiffs and seneschals. This was a form of inquiry into royal administration, and it showed an interest in restraining officials as well as nobles. The king’s court, which was beginning to develop into the Parlement of Paris, handled more cases on appeal. Royal ordinances restricted private warfare and, in the royal lands, discouraged the judicial duel in favor of proof by witnesses. The details of how consistently these rules were applied are debated, and the royal domain was only part of France.
The effect was to make the crown more visible as a source of justice. Subjects who had once looked mainly to their local lord now had reason to look to the king, and that quietly widened French monarchy’s power.
Piety and its expression
Louis took religion very seriously. He fasted, built hospitals and gave alms, and he favored the new mendicant orders. He acquired what were believed to be the Crown of Thorns and other holy relics from Constantinople, and he had the Sainte-Chapelle built in Paris to house them, completed in the late 1240s. The chapel is a notable piece of Gothic architecture, and it also served as a statement that the French king was a protector of Christendom’s most sacred objects.
His piety also had a harder edge. The king supported action against heresy, and royal officials cooperated with church inquisitors in southern France. He took steps against blasphemers, and he was hostile toward Jews: in the early 1240s, copies of the Talmud were burned in Paris after a church-led examination, and he later ordered the expulsion of Jews from the royal lands, though that order was not fully enforced. A fair account has to include both his reputation for fairness to the poor and these policies of intolerance, which reflected widespread attitudes among rulers and clergy of his time and were not unique to him.
Treaty with England
In 1259 Louis made the Treaty of Paris with Henry III of England. Henry gave up claims to Normandy, Anjou and other lands lost earlier, and he was confirmed in Gascony as a vassal of the French king. Louis’ advisers were unsure about the generosity of the terms, but he argued that it would make for a lasting peace between kin, since their wives were sisters. In the long run the arrangement left Gascony as a source of friction, which later fed into the dispute that became the Hundred Years War.
Two crusades
Louis took the cross after a serious illness in the 1240s and led the Seventh Crusade, which landed in Egypt in 1249. The army took Damietta, but the advance faltered, and in 1250 the crusaders were defeated near Mansourah and the king himself was captured. He was ransomed, with the surrender of Damietta and a large payment, and then spent several years in the Kingdom of Jerusalem and nearby coastal towns, strengthening fortifications and negotiating until news of his mother’s death in 1252 and later affairs in France brought him home in 1254. He also sent envoys toward the Mongol world during these years, with limited results.
In 1270 he set out again, this time toward Tunis. The reasons are discussed by historians and probably included hopes of a conversion or of a base for operations in Egypt. Disease struck the camp, and Louis died there in August 1270. He was canonized in 1297, which is why he is called Saint Louis.
Assessing the reign
Louis IX left France with a stronger system of courts, a clearer sense that the crown stood for justice and a reputation for holiness that later kings used. His grandson Philip the Fair would benefit from these foundations, though he used them for more openly political ends. The crusades, by contrast, cost enormous sums and brought no lasting gains. It is reasonable to say that his government mattered more than his campaigns, even though the campaigns were what he most wanted to achieve.