Louis IX of France: A Wildly Successful Ruler, but a Disastrous Crusader

The Statue of King Louis IX, known as the Apotheosis of St. Louis, in St. Louis, Missouri, on July 7, 2017. The city is named after the legendary French king. STLJB/Shutterstock

Commentary

Louis IX was one of the most remarkable of French kings and the only one to be considered a saint. His medieval reputation was enormous, spreading even to the New World with French explorers who named a settlement on the banks of the Mississippi after him.

Louis became king at the age of 12 upon the death of his father, Louis VIII. (Why French royal families are so unimaginative with their names is a mystery; there would be 18 kings named Louis and 10 named Charles.) His deeply-religious mother, Blanche of Castile, served as regent until he came of age. Her piety and Catholic zeal also infused her son, who vowed to live up to the title of “most Christian king,” a name attached to French rulers by the papacy.

After his accession to full power in 1234, Louis decreed a number of laws against moral crimes such as usury, prostitution, and blasphemy, and acted against his country’s Jews. He purchased a number of relics from the financially-strapped Byzantine emperor, including the Crown of Thorns and a piece of the True Cross, which he housed in the gloriously Gothic Sainte-Chappelle church which he commissioned. His charity was legendary; he washed the feet of beggars and established hospitals, leprosaria, and asylums across France.

While his domestic policies were successful, Louis’ involvement in crusading was disastrous. The holdings in the Holy Land that had been won by the knights of the First Crusade were greatly reduced by Islamic counter-attacks. Jerusalem and Damascus had fallen to the Egyptian Ayyubid dynasty, and by the mid-1240s Christian territory in the Levant consisted largely of a few cities in a narrow strip of the Mediterranean coast.

In 1249 he launched the Seventh Crusade, leading 35,000 men in attacking the Muslim strongholds in Egypt. Louis hoped that by capturing cities there, he could exchange this territory for cities and fortresses in the Holy Land. His army was successful on the mouth of the Nile in capturing the port of Damietta, but their attempt to penetrate inland toward Cairo was thwarted by pestilence and high water. As his disease-wracked forces retreated, Louis commanded the rear guard. On April 7, 1250, Louis, his brothers, and a host of French nobles and soldiers were captured at the Battle of Fariskur.

Negotiations with his captors were long and tense. Louis insisted that the ordinary troops who could not afford to buy their freedom not be forgotten—he paid their captors to release them. After paying the enormous ransom of 400,000 dinars, promising never again to attack Egypt, and returning the city of Damietta, Louis was freed but he chose not to return immediately to France. Instead he became a pilgrim, visiting holy sites in Jerusalem, and aiding the few remaining crusader holdings along the coast of the eastern Mediterranean. Even after reaching home Louis continued to send aid to the imperilled Christian communities.

Undaunted by his failure in Egypt, Louis would again turn his thoughts to war against Islam. The decades after his return were marked by internal turmoil and civil wars in Europe that had taken the minds of popes and princes off the situation in the Holy Land. Louis worked to remedy that lack of focus. He organized the Eighth Crusade, this time targeted against Tunis in North Africa, either because of its riches or because the king believed that the local sultan was prepared to convert to Christianity.

Louis managed to convince the kings of Aragon and Sicily, and the future king of England, to accompany him. In 1270 his fleet and 15,000 crusaders landed at Carthage where his camp was soon swept by a plague of dysentery, which carried off Louis and many of his men. A hasty treaty with the sultan allowed for an honourable withdrawal. Louis’ body was boiled and the bones and heart were sent back to France where he was interred among the tombs of his ancestors at St Denis.

The failure of the Eighth Crusade marked the last serious attempt by European kings to retake Jerusalem or defend Christian territory in the Levant. The fall of Acre in 1291 saw the last crusader city yield.

Louis was canonized in 1297. He is the patron saint of Quebec, St. Louis, New Orleans, and Versailles. He may be invoked by barbers, crusaders, kings, stonemasons, parents of large families, and those with difficult marriages.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.