more than ordinary power over his clergy.  The great feudal vassals of eastern France, with a strong instinct that he was their enemy, made a league with the Emperor Otto IV. and his uncle King John, against Philip Augustus.  John attacked him in the south, and was repulsed by Philip’s son, Louis, called the “Lion;” while the king himself, backed by the burghers of his chief cities, gained at Bouvines, over Otto, the first real French victory, in 1214, thus establishing the power of the crown.  Two years later, Louis the Lion, who had married John’s niece, Blanche of Castile, was invited by the English barons to become their king on John’s refusing to be bound by the Great Charter; and Philip saw his son actually in possession of London at the time of the death of the last of the sons of his enemy, Henry II.  On John’s death, however, the barons preferred his child to the French prince, and fell away from Louis, who was forced to return to France.

8.  The Albigenses (1203—­1240).—­The next great step in the building up of the French kingdom was made by taking advantage of a religious strife in the south.  The lands near the Mediterranean still had much of the old Roman cultivation, and also of the old corruption, and here arose a sect called the Albigenses, who held opinions other than those of the Church on the origin of evil.  Pope Innocent III., after sending some of the order of friars freshly established by the Spaniard, Dominic, to preach to them in vain, declared them as great enemies of the faith as Mahometans, and proclaimed a crusade against them and their chief supporter, Raymond, Count of Toulouse.  Shrewd old King Philip merely permitted this crusade; but the dislike of the north of France to the south made hosts of adventurers flock to the banner of its leader, Simon de Montfort, a Norman baron, devout and honourable, but harsh and pitiless.  Dreadful execution was done; the whole country was laid waste, and Raymond reduced to such distress that Peter I., King of Aragon, who was regarded as the natural head of the southern races, came to his aid, but was defeated and slain at the battle of Muret.  After this Raymond was forced to submit, but such hard terms were forced on him that his people revolted.  His country was granted to De Montfort, who laid siege to Toulouse, and was killed before he could take the city.  The war was then carried on by Louis the Lion, who had succeeded his father as Louis VIII. in 1223, though only to reign three years, as he died of a fever caught in a southern campaign in 1226.  His widow, Blanche, made peace in the name of her son, Louis IX., and Raymond was forced to give his only daughter in marriage to one of her younger sons.  On their death, the county of Toulouse lapsed to the crown, which thus became possessor of all southern France, save Guienne, which still remained to the English kings.  But the whole of the district once peopled by the Albigenses had been so much wasted