A prince who knew so well how to conquer and how to treat the conquered might have been tempted to make an unfair use, alternately, of his victories and of his clemency, and to pursue his advantages beyond measure; but Louis was in very deed a Christian.  When War was not either a necessity or a duty, this brave and brilliant knight, from sheer equity and goodness of heart, loved peace rather than war.  The successes he had gained in his campaign of 1242 were not for him the first step in an endless career of glory and conquest; he was anxious only to consolidate them whilst securing, in Western Europe, for the dominions of his adversaries, as well as for his own, the benefits of peace.  He entered into negotiations, successively, with the Count of La Marche, the King of England, the Count of Toulouse, the King of Aragon, and the various princes and great feudal lords who had been more or less engaged in the war; and in January, 1213, says the latest and most enlightened of his biographers, “the treaty of Lorris marked the end of feudal troubles for the whole duration of St. Louis’s reign.  He drew his sword no more, save only against the enemies of the Christian faith and Christian civilization, the Mussulmans.” (Histoire de St. Louis, by M. Felix Faure, t. i. p. 388.)

Nevertheless there was no lack of opportunities for interfering with a powerful arm amongst the sovereigns his neighbors, and for working their disagreements to the profit of his ambition, had ambition guided his conduct.  The great struggle between the Empire and the Papacy, in the persons of Frederick II., Emperor of Germany, and the two popes, Gregory IX. and Innocent IV., was causing violent agitation in Christendom, the two powers setting no bounds to their aspirations of getting the dominion one over the other, and of disposing one of the other’s fate.  Scarcely had Louis reached his majority when, in 1237, he tried his influence with both sovereigns to induce them to restore peace to the Christian world.  He failed; and thenceforth he preserved a scrupulous neutrality towards each.  The principles of international law, especially in respect of a government’s interference in the contests of its neighbors, whether princes or peoples, were not, in the thirteenth century, systematically discussed and defined as they are nowadays with us; but the good sense and the moral sense of St. Louis caused him to adopt, on this point, the proper course, and no temptation, not even that of satisfying his fervent piety, drew him into any departure from it.  Distant or friendly, by turns, towards the two adversaries, according as they tried to intimidate him or win him over to them, his permanent care was to get neither the State nor the Church of France involved in the struggle between the priesthood and the empire, and to maintain the dignity of his crown and the liberties of his subjects, whilst employing his influence to make prevalent throughout Christendom a policy of justice and peace.