Paris fills the road to bring its boy king home

MONTLHÉRY, France, 1227 AD — In 1227 AD, soldiers hid beside a road south of Paris. They worked for some of the most powerful lords in France, and they were waiting for a boy to ride by with his mother. The boy was their own king, Saint Louis IX of France, and they planned to grab him.

St. Louis’s father, King Louis VIII, had been at war in the south of France. On the way home he caught dysentery, a dangerous sickness of the gut. He died at Montpensier in November 1226 AD. St. Louis was twelve. King Louis VIII had chosen the boy’s mother, Queen Blanche of Castile, to rule France for him. She would rule until St. Louis was old enough to rule on his own.

Queen Blanche came from Spain, and she had no family or friends anywhere in France. The great lords of France, the barons, looked at a child king and a foreign queen and saw their chance. They chose the king’s uncle, the count of Boulogne, as their leader. They wanted prisoners set free and lands handed back. Queen Blanche held both, and she wouldn’t give them up.

A crown in a hurry

Before he died, King Louis VIII asked for his son to be crowned quickly. He wanted the great lords to promise the boy their loyalty. Queen Blanche put her grief aside and wrote to the bishops and lords, telling them to come to Reims. Many of the barons refused to come.

On November 29, 1226 AD, St. Louis was crowned at Reims. It was the first Sunday of Advent, less than a month after his father died. Then the bishops and lords who had come swore loyalty to two people: the boy king and his mother.

After the crowning, the barons whose demands Queen Blanche had refused began to plot against her. Three counts made a pact against the king: Theobald of Champagne, Hugh of La Marche and Peter of Brittany. They began filling their castles with food and soldiers.

Queen Blanche didn’t wait for them to strike first. She gathered an army and threatened to march into the lands of the count of Champagne. He didn’t want a war, so he quickly asked for peace. From then on he was on her side.

Early in 1227 AD Queen Blanche took her son and her army south against Hugh and Peter. In March they gave in and promised to be loyal to the king again. But they were furious at having to obey a woman, and they kept plotting.

Trapped at Montlhéry

Not long after, the barons made a new plan. They would grab the king on the road as he rode with his mother from Orléans to Paris. The count of Champagne warned Queen Blanche, and she hurried on. She reached Montlhéry, a castle town south of Paris. There she learned that the barons’ armed men were already hiding on the road ahead.

Years later St. Louis told the story to his friend Jean de Joinville. Joinville was a knight who wrote a book about St. Louis’s life. St. Louis said that he and his mother didn’t dare go on. They waited until people from Paris came, armed, to fetch them.

Queen Blanche sent messages to the leading townspeople of Paris and to the villages around it. The men of Paris took up weapons, and they all marched toward Montlhéry with their banners flying.

The barons’ soldiers were still waiting in their ambush. When they saw how many people were coming, they were afraid to attack.

Joinville wrote down what St. Louis remembered of the ride home: “all the way, from Montlheri to Paris, was filled with people, armed and unarmed.” The people called out to Christ to give the boy a long, good life. They also asked Christ to keep him safe from his enemies.

Queen Blanche went on ruling France for her son until 1234 AD.

Forty-three years after the ride from Montlhéry, St. Louis lay sick in an army camp outside Tunis, in North Africa. He gave his son Philip a set of teachings he had written out for him. In them St. Louis told Philip to look after the towns of the kingdom. He wrote: “I will remember that Paris and the good towns of my kingdom aided me against the barons, when I was newly crowned.”