36 HISTOR V OF FRANCE. [chap. little more than a campaign against the Albigenses. To him Amalric de Montfort gave up all his claims in the south, and he hoped to stretch his sway from the Channel to the Pyrenees. In the weakness of the minority of Henry III. he won part of Poitou with the important haven oi Rochelle, the "doorway" of the English into France. At Boitro^cs a synod was held, in which the legate refused submission from the counts of Toulouse and Foix, excommunicated them, and proclaimed a fresh crusade, of which the king was leader. It set forth in 1226, and passed through the imperial lands on the left side of the Rhone. Here the free city of A^'ignotiwA.'s, governed by consols, like the Italian towns. It had taken part with the Albigenses, and, for having seized and flayed alive the Count of Orange, it had been for twelve years under ban of the Church, and though a free passage was offered the crusaders, it was thought right to punish it. The siege lasted three months, and the army without was much harassed by the Count of Toulouse ; and by the time the city was taken and nearly destroyed disease had taken a strong hold of the crusad- ing anny, and though they sat down before Toulouse, sickness forced one baron after another to go home, and among them the king himself. He only reached Mont- pe7isier, where he died in 1226, in his fortieth year. 7. The Leagues of Vassals, 1226. — Lewis IX., the eldest of his four sons, was but eleven years old, but their mother, Bla)ichc of Castile, was a woman of sense and spirit, for which the vassals were little prepared when they leagued together with Raymond of Toulouse to make a strong effort against the yoke that Philip Augustus had been laying on them, and to keep down the " Spanish woman's son." At its head was a great grandson of Lewis VI., Peter of Dreux, the regent who had married Constance's last child, Alice, and was called Mauclerc, not from bad scholarship, but from hatred of the clergy. He was joined, among others, by the young Theobald of Blots, Count of Chatnpngne, and the old Hugh of l.iisignan, Count of I a Marche, who had just married his old love, the widow of King John, and all marched on Orleans, where were the queen and her sons. She sent an appeal to Paris, and the burghers came out in force and escorted her safely to their city, while the barons dispersed, and only Peter of Dreux continued the war openly, though when she summoned the barons
