the allegiance of every Gascon noble, except Elie Rudel, the lord of Bergerac.  The siege of La Reole, the only serious military operation of the campaign, occupied Richard all the summer and autumn, and it was not until November 13 that the burgesses opened their gates.  As soon as the French had retired, the lord of Bergerac, “after the fashion of the Poitevins,” renounced Louis and professed himself the liegeman of Earl Richard.  Then the worst trouble was that Savary de Mauleon’s ships commanded the Bay of Biscay, and rendered communication between Bordeaux and England very difficult.[1] Once more the men of the Cinque Ports came to the king’s aid, and there was severe fighting at sea, involving much plunder of merchant vessels and dislocation of trade.

    [1] The names of his familia taken with him are in Patent
    Rolls of Henry III., 1216-1227, pp. 461-62.

The English sought to supplement their military successes by diplomacy.  Richard of Cornwall made an alliance with the counts of Auvergne, and the home administration negotiated with all possible enemies of the French King.  A proposal to affiance Henry’s sister, Isabella, to Henry, King of the Romans, the infant son of Frederick II., led to no results, for the Archbishop of Cologne, the chief upholder of the scheme in Germany, was murdered, and the young king found a bride in Austria.  Yet the project counteracted the negotiations set on foot by Louis to secure Frederick II. for his own side, and induced the Emperor to take up a position of neutrality.  An impostor appeared in Flanders who gave out that he was the old Count Baldwin, sometime Latin Emperor of the East, who had died in prison in Bulgaria twenty years before.  Baldwin’s daughter, Joan, appealed to Louis for support against the false Baldwin, whereupon Henry recognised his claims and sought his alliance.  Nothing but the capture and execution of the impostor prevented Henry from effecting a powerful diversion in Flanders.  Peter Mauclerc, Count of Brittany, was won over by an offer of restitution to his earldom of Richmond, and by a promise that Henry would marry his daughter Iolande.  Intrigues were entered into with the discontented Norman nobles, and the pope was importuned to save Henry from French assaults at the same moment that the king made a treaty of alliance with his first cousin, the heretical Raymond VII. of Toulouse.  Honorius gave his ward little save sympathy and good advice.  His special wish was to induce Louis to lead a French expedition into Languedoc against the Albigensian heretics.  As soon as Louis resolved on this, the pope sought to prevent Henry from entering into unholy alliance with Raymond.  It was the crusade of 1226, not the good-will of the Pope or the fine-drawn English negotiations, which gave Gascony a short respite.  Louis VIII. died on November 8 in the course of his expedition, and the Capetian monarchy became less dangerous during the troubles of a minority, in which his widow, Blanche, strove as regent to uphold the throne of their little son, Louis IX.