weakness, to render thee homage; but now I swear to thee, with a resolute heart, that I will never be thy liegeman; thou dost unjustly dub thyself my lord; thou didst shamefully filch this countship from my step-son, Earl Richard, whilst he was faithfully fighting for God in the Holy Land, and was delivering our captives by his discretion and his compassion.’  After this insolent declaration, the Count of La Marche violently thrust aside, by means of his men-at-arms, all those who barred his passage; hasted, by way of parting insult, to fire the lodging appointed for him by Count Alphonso, and, followed by his people, left Poitiers at a gallop.” (Histoire de Saint Louis, by M. Felix Faure, t. i. p. 347.)

[Illustration:  De la Marche’s parting Insult——­126]

This meant war; and it burst out at the commencement of the following spring.  It found Louis equally well prepared for it and determined to carry it through.  But in him prudence and justice were as little to seek as resolution; he respected public opinion, and he wished to have the approval of those whom he called upon to commit themselves for him and with him.  He summoned the crown’s vassals to a parliament; and, “What think you,” he asked them, “should be done to a vassal who would fain hold land without owning a lord, and who goeth against the fealty and homage due from him and his predecessors?” The answer was, that the lord ought in that case to take back the fief as his own property.  “As my name is Louis,” said the king, “the Comet of La Marche doth claim to hold land in such wise, land which hath been a fief of France since the days of the valiant King Clovis, who won all Aquitaine from King Alaric, a pagan without faith or creed, and all the country to the Pyrenean mount.”  And the barons promised the king their energetic co-operation.

The war was pushed on zealously by both sides.  Henry III., King of England, sent to Louis messengers charged to declare to him that his reason for breaking the truce concluded between them was, that he regarded it as his duty towards his step-father, the Count of La Marche, to defend him by arms.  Louis answered that, for his own part, he had scrupulously observed the truce, and had no idea of breaking it; but he considered that he had a perfect right to punish a rebellious vassal.  In this young King of France, this docile son of an able mother, none knew what a hero there was, until he revealed himself on a sudden.  Near two towns of Saintonge, Taillebourg and Saintes, at a bridge which covered the approaches of one and in front of the walls of the other, Louis, on the 21st and 22d of July, delivered two battles, in which the brilliancy of his personal valor and the affectionate enthusiasm he excited in his troops secured victory and the surrender of the two places.  “At sight of the numerous banners, above which rose the oriflamme, close to Taillebourg, and of such a multitude of tents, one pressing against another and forming