and this prince formed a treaty with the pope to the effect proposed. A crusade, the usual pontifical resource, was preached against Manfred; and a large French army marched under the united banners of the cross and of Charles to the conquest of Naples. Manfred, at the head of his troops, a great number of whom were Saracens, met his rival in the plain of Grandella. One battle decided the war. Manfred bravely perished in the field: Charles of Anjou and the French remained masters of Sicily and Naples. Such was the commencement of those conquests in Italy, which continued so long the object of French ambition, and of which the first brilliant results were always doomed to end in subsequent disappointment and defeat.

While Christians, calling themselves crusaders, and so constituted by the pontiff, were thus engaged in slaughtering their brethren, tidings arrived that Palestine had been invaded by the soldan of Egypt; that Cesarea, and, at last, Antioch itself, had fallen. Upwards of 100,000 Christians had been put to the sword, or sold to slavery. Europe was thus periodically frighted from apathy, and roused to enthusiam and vengeance, by some fearful calamity in the East. Louis IX. was deeply moved; and, despite of his feebleness and age, instantly undertook to head another crusade. His relatives and nobles, even the pope himself, endeavoured to dissuade him; but to no purpose. He employed three years in preparation. It was in this interval that Naples was invaded by young Conradin, the last prince of the house of Suabia. Charles of Anjou advanced to defend his newly-acquired kingdom, and defeated his rival in battle. Conradin was taken, and instantly sent by his ruthless conqueror to perish on the scaffold.

St. Louis embarked with his three sons and a considerable army at Aigues Mortes, in July, 1270. Palestine or Egypt was considered to be the object of the expedition. The king surprised his followers by declaring his intention of disembarking at Tunis. The pious king's object was said to be, the assurances he had

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received of the willingness of the king of Tunis to become Christian. Charles of Anjou had also an object in conquering that district of Africa, which was immediately opposite to his kingdom of Sicily. Whatever was the expectation, it was not fulfilled. Omar king of Tunis, instead of welcoming Louis as an apostle, prepared to oppose him as an invader. The French effected a landing, however, and in a few days attacked and took what is called the castle of Carthage. The ancient rival of

Rome still existed as a town, and was defended by two hundred men. Louis established himself within its walls, and was soon besieged there by the Tunisians. The plague, a more formidable enemy than man, at the same time attacked the French. Numbers of the chiefs of the expedition fell immediate victims to it. The king and his sons caught the infection. One of the latter, the count of Nevers, died. Louis lay twenty-two days extended on his couch of death, displaying that patience, piety, and presence of mind, which have given him in history the mingled character of a great man and a saint. In his dying moments he caused himself to be removed from his couch and placed upon ashes. In this situation he expired.

The character of St. Louis is one of the noblest that occurs in modern history. He possessed all the virtues of his age, untarnished by its vices: he was brave without cruelty or violence, pious without bigotry or weakness. Although more the hero of the legend than of romance, he commands our admiration by his rare disinterestedness, his bold attempt to rule his actions as a monarch by the rigid maxims of private honour, and by the great good sense that tempered his devotion, and that never allowed him to sacrifice humanity or justice to the interests even of that church which he revered. There was one defect in his character, however, rendered more striking when we compare him with another saint and hero, Charlemagne *:

*The fact of Thomas Aquinas dining and being familiar with Louis is scarcely in contradiction to this censure.

this was his neglect of letters; shown not only by the silence of history as to his reading and acquirements, but by the fact that the education of his son and successor Philip was utterly neglected. Even his monkish . contemporaries found the ignorance of the prince "lamentable," and his reign corroborates the assertion.

Robert, the youngest son of St. Louis, was count of Clermont; he married the heiress of the county of Bourbon, and took that title. Although disordered in his intellect from a blow received at a tournament, he left a numerous progeny. His descendants succeeded to the throne of France, which they still occupy, in the person of Henry IV.

Philip III. or the Hardy, called so apparently from no other cause than that of having survived the war and pestilence of Tunis, was still sick when St. Louis expired. The conduct of the army devolved on Charles of Anjou, who by a treaty put an end to the war. Philip journeyed through Italy accompanied by five coffins, those of his father, brother, brother-in-law, wife, and son. It was during this journey that Henry, nephew of Henry III. of England, was assassinated by Guy de Montfort in the church of Viterbo.

The principal, almost the only, events of the reign of Philip the Hardy sprung from the rivalry of the royal families of France and Aragon: that of Castile also mingled in the quarrel; but all the circumstances are far too minute and unimportant to be given. The succession of the counts of Champagne to the crown of Navarre has been mentioned. Henry the last king left a daughter, who, as heiress of that powerful house, was sought by many competitors; amongst others, by the prince of Aragon. As yet but a child, her mother fled with her to the court of France, where being brought up, she was afterwards married to Philip the Hardy's son, and thus brought her rich heritage to swell that of the French crown. The king of Aragon was of course wroth at this abduction; and other causes contributed to aggravate his enmity. France, however, was not the

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most vulnerable point for attacking the French. The followers of Charles of Anjou, since their conquest of. Sicily and Naples, had conducted themselves so as to excite the discontent and hatred of a vindictive people. Peter of Aragon received the Sicilian exiles with the greatest friendship; amongst the rest, John of Procida, their chief. He incited these malcontents to avenge themselves, and promised them his support. John of Procida passed over to Sicily, where, in the disguise of a Franciscan friar, he prepared measures of revolt and vengeance. On Easter day, 1282, when the church bells sounded for vespers at Palermo, the Sicilians rushed on all the French they could meet, and massacred them with every aggravation of cruelty. The same scene was imitated and repeated all through the island. Eight thousand French are said to have perished in this massacre, well known by the name of the Sicilian vespers. Peter of Aragon soon after arrived in Sicily with a fleet and army. Charles, who had hurried from Naples to avenge his countrymen, was compelled to retreat with the loss of his fleet; and Sicily was not only lost, to the house of Anjou, but the Aragonese began to pass the strait and to establish themselves in Calabria. The anger of the two competitors was not satisfied in the field; they exchanged insults and defiances, and challenged each other to single combat. Bordeaux was fixed as the rendezvous, and Edward I., a neutral monarch, was to guard the field, and guarantee the princely duellists, from unfair advantage. This chivalresque mode of settling their differences never took effect; Edward refused to sanction it: and although Charles of Anjou made his appearance at the time and place appointed, Peter came but to enter his protest and instantly disappear.

Philip the Hardy took up the quarrel of his uncle Charles. He made immense preparations, resolving to overwhelm his enemy, and entered Spain with a numerous army. He advanced, however, no farther than Gerona, which he took, and thence was compelled to

retreat. A fever, the consequence of disappointment and fatigue, seized upon Philip, and he expired at Perpignan, in October, 1285. The rival princes, Charles of Anjou and Peter of Aragon, died the same year.

Little is known of the internal state of France or of its court during the reign of Philip. From Matthew Paris and Joinville to Froissart, there is a breach in the succession of chroniclers ill filled up by the dry pages of William of Nangis. History had, in fact, outgrown its ancient scope. Provinces were lost in kingdoms; barons and counts in royalty: wars, from provincial quarrels, became national ones. To compre

hend this wide field, and follow the march of such events, became impossible for a monk; the information of the cloister no longer sufficed: history henceforward demanded the pen of the statesman or the warrior ; and such were not always found, possessed of the leisure and the learning requisite for the task.

There is, nevertheless, one domestic circumstance of Philip's reign preserved to us. It seems that he honoured with his peculiar favour Pierre de la Brosse, a chirurgeon-barber of St. Louis, who became chamberlain to the king. The ignoble favourite was of course the object of hatred and jealousy to the court, and to the queen also, who endeavoured to counteract his influence. Pierre de la Brosse made use on his side of insinuations against the queen; and the king's eldest son Louis dying somewhat suddenly, poison was whispered to be the cause. Pierre de la Brosse was the origin of the report that the queen sought to remove her step-sons, in order to make room for her own. His boldness or his malevolence, - which, cannot be decided,— proved fatal to the favourite: he was tried by a commission, and hanged on the common gibbet at Montfaucon.

Philip the Fair, the fourth monarch of his name, succeeded at the age of seventeen to the vacant throne. The retreat and disasters of the French army might, at any other time, have proved most fatal to the monarchy; but neighbouring kingdoms were not then actuated by