FRANCE UP TO HUNDRED YEARS’WAR 121 
But it is not so much for her successful statesmanship 
that Blanche is famous, as for the training which she 
gave to her son. Louis IX., Saint Louis, as he is 
generally called, was the ideal mediaeval king. He 
was deeply religious, but with none of the weakness 
which characterised so many of the religious kings of the 
Middle Ages. He was just, honourable and straight- 
forward in all his dealings; temperate, humble and 
charitable ; a model son, husband, father and brother ; 
an ideal knight, a shrewd statesman, a king who 
upheld the authority and fulfilled the duties of his 
position. “As a Christian and as a man, as a states- 
man and as a warrior, he was the exemplar of all that 
was best in his age.”! There is no more attractive 
figure in history than that of Saint Louis as he 
appears in the pages of his biography written by 
his friend the Sieur de Joinville, 
The character of Louis appears to great advantage 
in his dealings with England. Henry III invaded 
France in 1242 to aid a rebellion of the nobles of 
the south-west in the hope of recovering Poitou. He 
was ignominiously defeated, but some years later Louis 
voluntarily returned to him certain parts of Philip’s 
conquests to which he thought the English king had a 
Just claim. 
In his reign the royal power was extended in the 
south : his brother Alfonso succeeded to the Countship 
of Toulouse on the death of his father-in-Jaw, while 
another brother, Charles of Anjou, became, through 
marriage to its heiress, Count of Provence, that 
part of Languedoc which 48. not hitherto been 
part of the French *:ng.!um. It was this Charles