When he was married and in the enjoyment of domestic happiness Louis renounced of his own accord his former pleasures, both royal and worldly. His entertainments, his hunting, his magnificent ornaments and dress gave place to simpler pleasures and the good works of a Christian life. From that time the active duties of royalty, earnest and scrupulous attention to his religious duties, the tender and vigilant cares of charity, the pure and intense delights of conjugal love, combined with the noble projects of a true knight—a soldier of the Cross—filled up the whole life of this young king, who was humbly striving to become a saint and a hero.
But trouble came to him sometimes in the midst of his felicity. As soon as her son was married, Queen Blanche became jealous of the wife and the happiness which she herself had procured for him—jealous as mother and as queen, who saw a rival both in affection and in sovereignty. This odious sentiment led her on to acts equally undignified, malignant, and unjust.
'The cruelty of Queen Blanche to Queen Margaret was,' says Joinville, 'so great that she would not allow her son to enjoy his wife's companionship during the daytime at all, if she could prevent it. The favourite abode of the King and Queen was at Pontoise, because there the apartments of the King were above those of the Queen, and they had arranged so well that they used to sit and talk on a winding staircase which led from one story to the other, and they had contrived all so cleverly that when the King's guard saw the Queen-mother coming to the apartment of her son the King, they used to knock with their rods against his door, and the King would come running to his own room, that his mother might find him there. Likewise the guard of Queen Margaret learned to apprise their mistress when her mother-in-law was approaching, in order that she might be in her own apartment. Once, when the King was sitting beside the Queen, his wife, who had been in great peril of childbirth, the Queen-mother entered, and saying, "Come away, you can do nothing here," took him by the hand, and carried him off. Whereupon Queen Margaret cried out, "Alas! you will not let me see my lord whether I am living or dying!" and fainted, so that they thought she was dead; and the King, who believed that she was dead, returned, and after great difficulty she was restored.'
Louis, in this strait, comforted his wife, but yet did not desert his mother. In the noblest of souls and the happiest of lives, there are oftentimes some incurable wounds and some griefs which can only be accepted in silence.
The young King's accession to royal power caused no change in the royal policy, nor in the management of public affairs. There were no innovations dictated by mere vanity; no change in the acts and words of the sovereign or in the choice of his advisers and the amount of consideration shown to them. The son's reign was but the continuation of the mother's regency. Louis continued to oppose the power of the great vassals in order that he might establish the supremacy of the Crown: he succeeded in subduing Pierre Mauclerc, the turbulent Count of Bretagne; won from Thibaut IV. Count of Champagne, the right of suzerainty in the lands of Chartres, Blois, Sancerre, and Châteaudun; and bought from their owner the fertile lands of Mâcon. It was almost invariably by pacific measures, negotiations ably conducted, and treaties scrupulously fulfilled, that he thus extended the domains of the Crown.
Queen Blanche, during her regency, had practised a far-sighted economy which placed large funds at the disposal of her son. Following her example, Louis was economical at ordinary times, but liberal when policy demanded it. The property, and the rights belonging thereto, which he purchased from the Count of Champagne, cost him a sum which would now in English money be as nearly as possible equivalent to £144,000 paid down, and an annual ground-rent of £7,200. [Footnote 6]
[Footnote 6: 40,000 livres Tournois paid down, and a ground-rent of 2,000 livres Tournois, or in modern French money about 3,600,000 francs paid down, and a ground-rent of 180,000 francs.]
The learned language of the political economy of our time—the terms 'sound system of taxation,' 'financial responsibility,' and 'balance of receipts and expenditure' cannot be applied to the thirteenth century, and to feudal royalty. But we may truly say, that St. Louis, free from all frivolous fancies, and desiring only the well-being of his subjects, managed to maintain order in his royal treasury, and knew both how to economize and how to spend freely for the success of his designs.