On July 14, 1223, the great King Philippe Auguste died, and on August 6th Queen Blanche and King Louis VIII. were crowned with solemn ceremonial. The Abbot of Saint-Remi, escorted by two hundred knights, brought the sacred ampulla to the cathedral of Rheims, and the archbishop anointed the royal pair. The king's sword was borne in the procession by his half-brother, Philippe Hurepel, son of Agnes de Meranie and Philippe Auguste. There were great festivities, lasting eight days, and the new king and queen manumitted serfs and showed mercy upon prisoners and captives. Queen Blanche still remains in the background during the brief reign of Louis VIII.; but we may note that she used her influence to secure the liberation of Ferrand de Portugal, Count of Flanders, who had been in captivity since the battle of Bouvines. Released from prison in 1227, Ferrand lived to become one of Blanche's most steadfast and useful allies.
Louis VIII. died in November, 1226, leaving Blanche with eight children to care for; in addition to those already mentioned there were Isabelle, Etienne, and Charles, all born since the accession of Louis. The king, who had forced the submission of Languedoc during the expedition on which he died, made his barons swear to be true to his son Louis. Realizing that his devoted wife could not reach him before his death, he provided as best he could for her. With perfect confidence in her, a confidence fully justified by the event, he declared that Prince Louis, his heir, as well as the whole kingdom and all the rest of his children should be under the tutelage of Queen Blanche until they came of age; to this important portion of the king's will some of the great barons and high church dignitaries were witnesses.
Blanche and her husband had loved each other tenderly and faithfully, and at first the widowed queen was looked upon with compassion. She was on her way to Louis's bedside, the younger children in a carriage and Prince Louis riding ahead, when she was met by the news of his death. Her grief was pitiable; but her sense of duty toward her children and her realization of the difficulties and dangers of her position gave her courage. She was not the kind of woman to succumb under grief for the loss of a well-loved husband or anxiety at finding herself obliged to govern a kingdom whose king was yet a boy.
At first the old retainers of Louis were around her and faithful to her. She was politic enough to win the support of the only prince of the blood, Philippe, surnamed Hurepel, on account of the great mat of shaggy hair he had inherited from his father, Philippe Auguste. Ferrand, Count of Flanders, was her friend, and she could rely upon the support of most of the clergy, and especially upon that of the papal legate, Romain Frangipani, Cardinal of Saint Angelo. Her surest allies, however, were the immediate servants of the crown: the chancellor, Guerin, who was unfortunately not to live long; Archambaud de Bourbon, Count Amaury de Montfort, the chamberlain, Barthélémy de Roye, and the noble constable, Mathieu de Montmorency. With the aid of such friends, Blanche began her duties as regent.
How long this regency was to last, how long it really did last, are matters not altogether easy to determine. In the first place, there were precedents, in the royal line as well as in feudal annals, for considering the age of majority as fourteen years; but there seems to have been authority equally as good for holding to the age of twenty-one. Louis was in his twelfth year when his father died. Blanche continued to act as regent for about ten years, and there was no protest based on the pretext that the young king should have been considered a major at fourteen years.
As soon as possible, Blanche had Louis crowned, a ceremony which did not imply that he was to be considered out of her tutelage, but which did give him a certain amount of prestige and consequent protection. The coronation, which took place on November 29, 1226, at Rheims, was but poorly attended by the nobles. Already there was discontent, and the great house of Dreux, led by the crafty and unscrupulous Pierre Mauclerc, Count of Brittany, was at the head of the disaffected. Count Thibaud de Champagne, son of Blanche's first cousin, would have come to the coronation, but Blanche ordered the gates of Rheims closed against him; for it was currently rumored, though the rumor was entirely without justification, that Louis VIII. had died very suddenly because of poison administered by Thibaud. But, with or without the presence of the great barons, Louis IX. was crowned, and Blanche made for herself and her son such friends as she could.
In England Henry III., always restive under the thought of the losses sustained by his father in France, was continually scheming to regain the lost territories. He formed alliances with some of the chief lords of Poitou, entered into negotiations for the hand of Yolande, daughter of Pierre Mauclerc, and made abortive, but nevertheless startling, preparations for a descent upon the coast of France. His allies among the discontented French nobility took up arms, inspired in part by the jealous Isabelle d'Angoulème, who had been the queen of John Lackland and was now Countess of Marche. Blanche promptly summoned the ban royal to assemble at Tours, whither she went with Louis in February, 1227. Count Thibaud de Champagne had been in treaty with the rebels and was marching with his forces as if to join them in Poitou. Tradition says that he was diverted by a secret message from Blanche; at any rate, he suddenly turned in his march and came to Tours, did homage to the boy king, and was graciously received by the queen regent. The defection of Thibaud upset the plans of the rebels, who quarrelled among themselves. Many of them came, one by one, to submit to Louis IX., and hostilities were suspended between the French and Richard of Cornwall, brother and representative of Henry III.
During the truce which followed, Blanche was enabled to prosecute the unfinished war in Languedoc against Raymond VII. of Toulouse and the Albigensian heretics. One is surprised to find that certain churches in France refused at first to grant the king subsidies to conduct this crusade, and that it was only by the vigorous measures of Cardinal Remain that they were at length compelled to yield.
The turbulent barons could not endure being governed by a woman. If Blanche had been a weak ruler the indignity of bearing her rule would have been atoned for by the laxity of that rule; but she was strong, and could control the barons, who accordingly hated her. Pierre Mauclerc and his party declared that France was not meant to be ruled by a foreign woman; they called her "Dame Hersent," like the she-wolf in the Roman du Renart; they circulated odious calumnies against her. The most noteworthy of these calumnies is that which connected her name with that of Thibaud de Champagne as an adulteress. They said that Blanche had been his paramour even during the life of her husband; nay, that she had connived at the murder of her husband, poisoned by Thibaud. They alleged that she was, moreover, secretly sending the royal treasure into Spain; that she was so vile that one lover did not suffice; that she had illicit relations with Cardinal Remain. It is needless to say that there is no foundation for these tales; they are the tax that a good woman paid for being at the same time great.
The malcontents plotted to separate the king from his mother, and determined to carry him off by force. Blanche and Louis were near Orléans when warned of the danger. Hastening toward Paris, they were forced to take refuge in the strong castle of Montlhéry, for the rebels were assembled in force at Corbeil, between them and Paris. Blanche appealed to the citizens of Paris to safeguard the king's approach. There could not have been a better testimonial to the popularity of the royal family and, incidentally, to the good government enjoyed under Blanche than the response made by these bourgeois. The militia of the surrounding country having been gathered in Paris, the combined forces of the city and country marched to Montlhéry, deploying along the route. Long after this Saint Louis used to tell Joinville of his triumphal entry: "He told me," says this chronicler, "that from Montlhéry, the road was filled with men with arms and men without arms, up to the gates of Paris, and that all shouted and called upon the Lord to grant him long and happy life, and to guard and protect him against his enemies." The nobles were balked, and retired from Corbeil.