had married Beatrice, heiress of the imperial fief of Provence, and being thus independent of his brother Louis, was able to establish a branch of the French royal family on the throne at Naples.  The reign of St. Louis was a time of much progress and improvement.  There were great scholars and thinkers at all the universities.  Romance and poetry were flourishing, and influencing people’s habits, so that courtesy, i.e. the manners taught in castle courts, was softening the demeanour of knights and nobles.  Architecture was at its most beautiful period, as is seen, above all, in the Sainte Chapelle at Paris.  This was built by Louis IX. to receive a gift of the Greek Emperor, namely, a thorn, which was believed to be from the crown of thorns.  It is one of the most perfect buildings in existence.

10.  Crusade of Louis IX.—­Unfortunately, Louis, during a severe illness, made a vow to go on a crusade.  His first fulfilment of this vow was made early in his reign, in 1250, when his mother was still alive to undertake the regency.  His attempt was to attack the heart of the Saracen power in Egypt, and he effected a landing and took the city of Damietta.  There he left his queen, and advanced on Cairo; but near Mansourah he found himself entangled in the canals of the Nile, and with a great army of Mamelukes in front.  A ford was found, and the English Earl of Salisbury, who had brought a troop to join the crusade, advised that the first to cross should wait and guard the passage of the next.  But the king’s brother, Robert, Count of Artois, called this cowardice.  The earl was stung, and declared he would be as forward among the foe as any Frenchman.  They both charged headlong, were enclosed by the enemy, and slain; and though the king at last put the Mamelukes to flight, his loss was dreadful.  The Nile rose and cut off his return.  He lost great part of his troops from sickness, and was horribly harassed by the Mamelukes, who threw among his host a strange burning missile, called Greek fire; and he was finally forced to surrender himself as a prisoner at Mansourah, with all his army.  He obtained his release by giving up Damietta, and paying a heavy ransom.  After twenty years, in 1270, he attempted another crusade, which was still more unfortunate, for he landed at Tunis to wait for his brother to arrive from Sicily, apparently on some delusion of favourable dispositions on the part of the Bey.  Sickness broke out in the camp, and the king, his daughter, and his third son all died of fever; and so fatal was the expedition, that his son Philip III. returned to France escorting five coffins, those of his father, his brother, his sister and her husband, and his own wife and child.