IV.] EXTENSION TO THE SOUTH. 41 could only offer Damietta and a ransom of a million gold bezants, the terms were accepted. But just then Tourass Chah was slain by his own Memlooks, who came rushing into Lewis' tent, crying, " What will you give me . I have slain your enemy ! " The king turned away his face in silence. All were in immediate expectation of being mas- sacred, and were confessing to one another and preparing for death with a grave resolution that awed the Memlooks. In a day or two the late sultan's widow gained the ascendency, and the former treaty was continued. The queen and her train were put on board ship, Damietta was surrendered, and Lewis was set free. Still, ill as he was, he fulfilled his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where he stayed four years, and did all he could to enable the four cities of the cost, which alone remained to the Franks, to hold out till aid could come from home. 13. Return of Lewis, 1254. — His two brothers, Charles and Alfonso, had returned at once. Alfonso was now Count of Toulouse by the death of Raymond. Charles had become Count of Provence through his wife. Thus Provence, though still a fief of the Empire, was ruled by a French prince, the first step towards its union with France. His chief object in Provence was breaking down the independence of the old Roman cities, ]Iar- seilles and others. Their mother, Blanche, died in 1253, and the tidings brought Lewis home. He reigned with uprightness and beneficence that have hardly ever been equalled, and St. Lewis, sitting under the oak of Vin- cennes, doing justice alike to peer and peasant, and lead- ing rather than driving, was a great example never quite forgotten. 14. The Parliament of Paris, 1258. — Law was still un- settled ; Roman law prevailed in the municipalities and the south, and was studied in the universities ; but the old Frank unwritten customs were supposed to bind the nobles, and each baron had the power of doing justice (or injustice) on his own estate. Disputes be- tween themselves ought to have come before their own assembly in the royal court, but were usually settled by private war and harrying one another's peasants. Lewis had decreed that in his own immediate fiefs no aggrieved baron should attack the offender for forty days after the injury. In 1257 he followed this up by forbidding, throughout the kingdom, private v/ars, burn- ing of crops, or hindering of the plough ; all grievances
