20. Philip III.
CHAPTER XX. Philip III. (1270-1285)
When Louis IX. died in Africa, he had with him his eldest son Philip, to whom he gave much good advice during his last illness. As soon as he was dead Philip went back to Europe, taking with him the bodies of five of his relations, who had all died during the few weeks that they had been in Egypt. These were, his father, his wife, his little baby, his uncle, and his aunt. It was a gloomy end to the Crusade; and not only to that Crusade, but to all those that there had been before, for there never was another. After this time people became too busy with their own affairs to care to go away and fight in a country with which they had really nothing to do.
Philip was not a wise or a great man, though he seems to have had a good disposition, and his reign was a dull, gloomy one — not a particularly happy time for France. The barons, who had been growing less and less powerful for a long time,( as I told you,) now became less important than ever, because the king began to say that he had a right to make any one whom he pleased a nobleman. He also made a law that men who were not noblemen might hold fiefs — that is, be his vassals and masters of an estate — so the old nobles found that quite common people, whom they thought much less good than themselves, were beginning to be masters of estates as they were, and also that these common people, whether they had estates or not, were made noblemen like themselves. As the kings grew stronger, they took away more and more of the power which had belonged to their barons. The barons no longer held courts where they behaved as little kings; they gave up their feasts and entertainments; and this made the whole country quiet and dull. The people of the towns were gradually getting more power; but they were not yet very strong, so that everything was in a mournful, dull state, which lasted all through this reign.
Philip has been called "Le Hardi," meaning the Bold; but all the time he was king he did only one thing which could be called bold, and most people would rather have called it hasty or rash. There was a dispute in Spain between an uncle and his young nephews as to who should inherit the throne. The nephews were too young to care themselves about reigning, but their mother was very anxious that one of her children should be king. She was the sister of Philip of France, and she asked him to help her.
Philip at once called together an army, and himself set off at the head of it to attack his sister's enemy; but almost before he had reached Spain he found that he had come without making enough preparation. He had no food left, and not enough arms for his soldiers. It was of no use for him to go farther, and he was glad to hear that one of his generals, who had been fighting in Spain in another quarrel, had just made peace with the king whom Philip was going to attack. This gave him an excuse for not going farther, and his subjects did not know how hasty and foolish he had been; they only saw how quickly he had marched to the help of his sister, and called him,( as I said,) "The Bold." The uncle of Philip who had died in the Holy Land, was the prince who had become master of all the land belonging to Count Raymond of Toulouse, in Languedoc. He left no child, and Languedoc passed on to Philip, and was ever afterwards a regular part of the French kingdom. Another great baron called the Count of Champagne died at about the same time, leaving an only daughter; and Philip gained leave from the Pope to marry her to one of his sons, so that France became larger by two provinces under the reign of this weak and unimportant king.
Philip had a barber named Peter la Brosse, of whom he was very fond. He used to talk to this man about all his most important affairs, and take his advice as to everything he did. The great barons and advisers of the king were often vexed when they had just settled with the king that some particular thing for which they wished should be done, to find that Philip had talked the matter over with La Brosse and changed his mind about it completely. La Brosse also persuaded the king to give honours to him and to his relations; his brother-in-law was made a bishop, his children were married to rich lords and ladies. At last the people who had to do with the king found that the best plan was to get La Brosse on their side to begin with, as what he wished was sure to be done; so every one tried to please him, and he became one of the most powerful men in the country.
But at last La Brosse quarrelled with the queen. Philip's first wife had died in the Holy Land, leaving four sons. Philip had married a second wife, a wise and beautiful princess, named Marie of Brabant. She also had children; and after she had been married two years one of her stepsons, the eldest son of the king, died suddenly.
Some people thought he had been poisoned; and La Brosse, who wanted to make the king dislike the queen, tried to persuade him that she had done this wicked deed, and would try to kill all her other stepsons in order that her own son might be king.
(No one)<Few persons> believed this horrible story, and there was no reason for believing it. Instead of doubting his wife, Philip began to doubt the honesty of La Brosse. But he still went on treating him as a great person and his best friend for two years longer. At the end of that time a messenger who was carrying some private letters to La Brosse fell ill at a monastery by the way, and died there, giving the letters he was carrying to the monks of the abbey, and making them promise him on his deathbed to give them to nobody but the King of France. This the monks promised and performed. Philip read the letters secretly with a few trusted barons, and no one else ever knew what had been in them; but Pierre la Brosse was suddenly carried away from his home and shut up in a strong tower, where, after a few days, he was brought before four or five barons, condemned to die, and hanged the next morning. No one ever knew what he had done, and the people of France thought that, whatever it was, he ought to have had a fair trial, and were angry at his death.
It is said that the king was very unwilling to agree to it, and that he was only with some difficulty persuaded to it by the barons. A king should never be persuaded by any one to do what is forbidden by the laws of the country; and it is forbidden by law, both in England and France, to put a man to death without openly saying why you are doing so, and giving him an opportunity of defending himself, whatever he may have done.
Philip had an uncle who was a very different kind of man from himself. His name was Charles of Anjou. He was fierce and active; fond of war, power, and adventure; and always looking about for one or other of these amusements. He was king of an island named Sicily, which is to the south of Italy; and he treated the people so badly that they hated him and all the French, and made up their minds to get rid of them all out of the island as soon as possible. They had made friends with one of the Spanish kings, who promised to help them, and all was ready for a rising up against the French, when one day a quarrel rose between a French soldier and a Sicilian who were walking in a public garden (one Sunday) when the vesper or evening bells were just ringing. All the Sicilians gathered round to help their countryman, and the French soldiers to help the Frenchman, till there was a general fight all through the city. Then the Sicilians rose up in other parts of the island and attacked all the French soldiers who lived near them, till there was scarcely one Frenchman left alive in the whole of Sicily, Charles of Anjou, who was not in the island at the time, did all in his power to make himself master of it once more, But he never could do so, and died without having succeeded.
This rising up of the Sicilians against the French is called the Sicilian Vespers, because it happened,( as I said,) just at vesper-tide, or evening time, and it was a terrible thing for the French people.
A sad accident happened at about this time in Philip's own family. His youngest brother had been made a knight, and a tournament was to be held in his honour. A tournament was an amusement which was coming very much into fashion at this time. It was a kind of sham-fight, in which knights rode against one another, attacked each other with swords and spears that were blunt, so as not to do any real harm, and tried to knock one another off their horses. The young prince, who had so lately become a knight, joined in the tournament, and was so much hurt by the blows he received, and confused by the heat and dust and the weight of his armour, that he became an idiot, and never recovered his senses. However, he found a young lady to marry him, and his descendants for some hundred years were called Bourbons, and some of them came to be kings at last, as we shall see.
I told you that one of the Spanish kings had helped the Sicilians in their rising up against Charles of Anjou. There were several different provinces in Spain, and each province had a king of its own. One of the most important was called Arragon, and the friend of the Sicilians was Peter, King of Arragon. The Pope at this time was the friend of Charles of Anjou, and was very angry with Peter of Arragon for having helped Charles's subjects to fight against him. He declared that Peter should be king no longer, and told Philip that he might have the kingdom of Arragon for one of his sons if he could conquer it from Peter. Philip at once set off across the Pyrenees to attack Arragon. He besieged a town named Gerona, and there he had to stay for two months and a half, for the people resisted him most bravely; but at last, after many of his men had died from heat and illness, the town gave itself up to him. He and his army were too much worn out to go any farther; they turned towards home, but on their way back through the Pyrenees Philip fell ill, and he died at the first French town they reached. A week after his death Gerona was taken back from the French by Peter of Arragon.
