de la Marche; she urged him to rise against the French and induced her son, Henry III. of England, to support him.  Henry hoped to regain his hold of Poitou and was further informed that the Count of Toulouse and the Spanish kings would join the alliance.  There seems to have been a general belief that Jaime would take the opportunity of avenging his father’s death at Muret.  However, no Spanish help was forthcoming; the allies were defeated at Saintes and at Taillebourg and this abortive rising ended in 1243.  Guillem de Montanhagol says in a sirventes upon this event, “If King Jaime, with whom we have never broken faith, had kept the agreement which is said to have been made [118] between him and us, the French would certainly have had cause to grieve and lament.”  Bernard de Rovenhac shows greater bitterness:  “the king of Aragon is undoubtedly well named Jacme (jac from jazer, to lie down) for he is too fond of lying down and when anyone despoils him of his land, he is so feeble that he does not offer the least opposition.”  Bernard Sicart de Marvejols voices the grief of his class at the failure of the rising:  “In the day I am full of wrath and in the night I sigh betwixt sleeping and waking; wherever I turn, I hear the courteous people crying humbly ‘Sire’ to the French.”  These outbursts do not seem to have roused Jaime to any great animosity against the troubadour class.  Aimeric de Belenoi belauds him, Peire Cardenal is said to have enjoyed his favour, and other minor troubadours refer to him in flattering terms.

The greatest Spanish patron of the troubadours was undoubtedly Alfonso X. of Castile (1254-1284).  El Sabio earned his title by reason of his enlightened interest in matters intellectual; he was himself a poet, procured the translation of many scientific books and provided Castile with a famous code of laws.  The Italian troubadours Bonifaci Calvo and Bartolomeo Zorzi were welcomed to his court, to which many others came from Provence.  One of his favourites was the troubadour who was the last [119] representative of the old school, Guiraut Riquier of Narbonne.  He was born between 1230 and 1235, when the Albigeois crusade was practically over and when troubadour poetry was dying, as much from its own inherent lack of vitality as from the change of social and political environment which the upheaval of the previous twenty years had produced.  Guiraut Riquier applied to a Northern patron for protection, a proceeding unexampled in troubadour history and the patron he selected was the King of France himself.  Neither Saint Louis nor his wife were in the least likely to provide a market for Guiraut’s wares and the Paris of that day was by no means a centre of literary culture.  The troubadour, therefore, tried his fortune with Alfonso X. whose liberality had become almost proverbial.  There he seems to have remained for some years and to have been well content, in spite of occasional friction with other suitors for the king’s favour.  His description of Catalonia is interesting.