At the close of the year 1244, in the midst of all these European troubles, and when his sympathy with them was so great, Louis fell ill at Pontoise and was soon in extreme danger. The alarm and grief of his realm reached the highest point. Bishops, abbots, priests, barons, knights, citizens, and peasants hurried, some to Pontoise and some to their churches, to learn 'how it would please the Lord to deal with the King.' Louis himself thought that his last hour was come. He caused all the members of his household to be summoned, thanked them for their services to himself, bade them serve God faithfully, and 'did all that a good Christian ought to do' in sight of death. His mother, wife, brothers, and all those who were about him, prayed for him incessantly; 'his mother more than all the others,' say the chronicles, 'and she added to her prayers great austerities.'
At one time the King lay motionless and without sign of breath, so that those around him thought he was dead. 'One of the ladies watching him,' says Joinville, 'wished to cover his face, saying that he was dead; but another lady on the opposite side of the bed would not allow it, for she said that the soul had not yet left the body. The King heard these ladies speaking, and, by the grace of our Lord, he began to breathe again; he stretched out his arms and legs, and said in a voice as hollow as that of one who has risen from the grave, "The dayspring from on high hath visited me, and by the grace of God recalled me from among the dead."'
No sooner had he regained consciousness and the power of speech, than he sent for William of Auvergne, Bishop of Paris, and Peter of Cuisy, Bishop of Meaux, in whose diocese he then was, and asked them to affix the holy cross to his shoulder, as a sign that he should journey beyond the seas to the Holy Land. The two bishops tried to dissuade him from this idea, and the two queens, Blanche and Margaret, implored him on their knees to wait until he was well, and after that to do whatsoever he would. But he persisted, and said that he would touch no food until he had received the cross, and at length the Bishop of Paris yielded and bestowed it upon him. The King received his cross with the deepest emotion; 'he kissed it, and laid it down very gently upon his breast.'
'When the Queen, his mother, knew that he had taken the cross,' says Joinville, 'she showed as much sorrow, according to his own account, as if she had seen him lying dead.' [Footnote 15]
[Footnote 15: Joinville, chap. xxiv.; 'Vie de St. Louis, par le Confesseur de la Reine Marguerite,' in Bouquet's 'Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France,' vol. xx. pp. 66, 67; Tillemont, 'Vie de St. Louis,' vol. iii.; Faure, 'Histoire de St. Louis,' vol. i.]
More than three years passed away before Louis was able to fulfil the engagement to which he had thus pledged himself. We might almost say that he was pledged to himself and by himself alone, and against the will of nearly every one about him.
The Crusades still possessed great fascination for the public mind, and were still the object of religious and chivalric enthusiasm; but, at the same time, they were dreaded and discouraged from a political point of view, and there were many men of very considerable standing, both among the clergy and laity, who would not have dared to say so, but who had no desire whatever to take part in a new crusade. Under the influence of this state of public feeling, not the less seriously entertained because it shrank from showing itself openly, Louis continued for the next three years to busy himself with the affairs of France and Europe. He tried to mediate in his neighbours' quarrels, and attempted to bring about a reconciliation between the Pope and the Emperor, as if it had been the one object of his life. His mother and the wisest of his advisers had once for a short time entertained some hope of being able to induce him to abandon his enterprise. The Bishop of Paris, the same who in the crisis of his illness and at his urgent request had given him the Crusader's cross, one day said to him: 'My lord the King, bethink you that when you received the cross, when suddenly and without due consideration you made this portentous vow, you were very feeble, and, to confess the truth, of clouded mind; your words, therefore, had not the weight of royal authority and verity. Our lord the Pope knows the requirements of your kingdom and the weakness of your bodily health, and he will very willingly grant you a dispensation. Consider how many dangers threaten us: the power of the schismatic Frederick, the snares of the rich King Henry of England, the treason of the Poitevins, only just crushed out, and the subtle disputes of the Albigenses. Germany is agitated; Italy has no peace. The Holy Land is difficult of access; you may never reach it, and, if you do, you leave behind you the implacable hatred for each other of the Pope and the Emperor.'
Queen Blanche made an appeal of a different kind. She reminded her son of the good counsel she had always given him, and told him that a son who obeyed and trusted his mother was well pleasing in the sight of God. She promised that if he would be content to give up his project, the Holy Land should not suffer, for more troops should be sent thither than he would have marched at the head of. The King listened attentively to all that was said, and was deeply moved by it. Then he answered:
'You tell me that I was not in the possession of all my faculties when I took the cross. Therefore, since it is your wish I renounce the cross, I restore it to you.' And with his own hands he unfastened the cross from his shoulder: 'There, my lord bishop, I place the cross with which I was invested in your hands again.'