[30]. His beard is carefully preserved at Spire.
Since William the Conqueror, who robbed the English of their beards with their liberty, history does not furnish us with any relation of this kind more poignant, than that of Lewis the Young, king of France.
This king, in the war which he carried on against Theobald count of Champaign, having taken Vitri by storm, burnt three thousand five hundred inhabitants, who had taken shelter in the church, says Mezerai, as a sacred asylum. He soon repented of this cruelty; and, by way of making some atonement, he, at the instigation of the clergy, consented to cut off his beard. His austere deportment and shaved chin greatly displeased his young wife Eleanor, the daughter of the duke of Aquitaine; she murmured against this ridiculous custom, and often reproached her husband, with looking much more like a monk than a king.
If Lewis the Young’s shaved chin had caused nothing more than the dislike of the young queen, the mischief would have been trifling; but several historians assert, that it was the first cause of that inextinguishable hatred which has so long divided England and France. The following is the account they give of it.
Saint Bernard, spurred on by pope Eugene III. his old disciple, took advantage of the religious disposition of the king of France, to persuade him, that nothing but the undertaking of a second crusade could appease the wrath of God. The penitent monarch, who had not hesitated to let himself be shaved, was as easily prevailed on to depart for Palestine. Eleanor, whether through curiosity, duty, or to divert the uneasiness of mind which the continual absence of her husband caused her, resolved to accompany him.
After the misfortunes with which this war was attended, the devout prince met with one that affected his heart much nearer; he perceived that his shaved chin had entirely alienated from him the affections of Eleanor, and that this wife, expressing every day her liking for long beards, listened with attention to the amorous assiduities of Raymund, prince of Antioch, her paternal uncle. They add, moreover, that a young Turk, called Saladin, uncommonly handsome, and endowed, no doubt, with a notable beard, likewise made this princess forget the fatigues of this long and unfortunate campaign.
Lewis the Young returned from Syria, still shaved, and, moreover, vanquished: too certain of Eleanor’s infidelity, in the rage of his jealousy, he assembled a council at Beaugency, where, spite of the prudent and pacific advice of his minister, (abbot Suger,) he had his marriage set aside, under pretext of consanguinity.
Eleanor, six weeks after her repudiation, married Henry, count of Anjou and duke of Normandy, who was afterwards Henry II. king of England. The French king saw with chagrin this new monarch, his vassal, in possession of his wife and the provinces which composed her dowry; he declared war against him; and this is the foundation of that destructive rivality which has so long troubled England and France. Who would have thought that the cutting off of a beard, six hundred years since, should have been the cause of a war the flames of which are scarcely extinguished, and which not long since set a great part of our globe in blaze.[[31]]
[31]. “This woman (Eleanor)” says Mezerai, “consummate in all sorts of wickedness, lived more than eighty years, kept up a war for more than sixty years, and left a hatred, between France and England, which has lasted more than three centuries.”
The Templars, that order of monks and soldiers, who had the faults of both, wore their beards like the Orientals. Philip the Handsome, king of France, thought it advisable to destroy these religious soldiers, and to have a great number of them burnt. Their execution was preceded by cutting off their beards, either to disgrace them more, or to deprive them of that grave imposing air which it gave them.