King Louis FRANCE, VIII

   Other names for Louis were FRANCE King, "Lionheart" and "Coeur-De-Lion".

   Ancestral File Number: 8XJD-DK. User ID: 18909844.

   General Notes:

"Coeur-De-Lion", "Lionheart", King of FRANCE Reigned 1223-1226.

BOOKS
Kings and Queens of Europe, Genealogical Chart, Anne Taute and Romilly Squire, Taute 1989: "Louis VIII, Son Philippe II Auguste, King of France 1223-1226, Mar Blanca Castilla, Died 1226."

A History of The Plantagenets, Vol II, The Magnificent Century, Thomas B Costain, 1951, Doubleday & Co, p28:
"Prince Louis was a small man, pale of face and austere of expression. He had little in him seemingly of his brilliant and turbulent father, Philip Augustus. A certain saintliness was claimed for him which undoubtedly he inherited from his grandfather, the ineffectual Louis VII, and which would assert itself so magnificently in his son, that great king who is called St. Louis...
"The chast and reserve prince might be pious, but he was a lion when stirred to fighting pitch. Philip Augustus was easy to rouse to anger and easy to calm down; Louis, hard to rouse, hard to appease. Despite his frail stature he was a chanpion of mettle...He does not seem to have had muchskill in generalship, however, accepting too completely the conceptions of warfare which chivalry had imposed on the Christian world and which would be shattered in a very few years, first by Sabutai leading the armies of Genghis Khan into theheart of the Holy Roman Empire and cutting armies of steel-clad knights to pieces, and later by a plebeian weapon called the longbow in the hands of English churls. His plan for conquering England was to take one castle after another and to enlarge gradually the arc of his control. The weakness of this method was that each castle taken necessitated leaving a garrison behind, thus leading to a stage when all his troops would be roosting in captured Keeps and strutting on alien battlements...Louis it seems, moreover, was a poor judge of men. The lieutenants to whom he entrusted the command of his little armies in preference to more experienced English barons were young French knights who were ready to lay their lives down bravely but who had no capacity for leadership.
"In February, Philip Augustus summoned his son home to discuss the situation. It was believed that the French King was anxious to avoid papal confirmation of the ban of excommunication laid byGualo on all Frenchmen under arms on English soil...He had been blowing hot and cold, however, on the English adventure and was beginning to doubt the issue. It was as clear to the French monarch as it was to William the Marshal that time was not fighting on the side of the French.
p44: "Peace was signed on September 12 on an island in the Thames at Kingston, with a proud queen mother and an exuberant young king to watch the proceedings. Louis was to withdraw from England and to forswear his claims to the crown. He agreed, moreover, to bring persuasion to bear on his father to restore Normandy and the Angevin provinces to the English. This was a futile gesture..."

Political History of England 1216-1377, Vol III, T FTout, AMS Press, 1905, p246: "...[1311] Nor were Earl Thomas [of Lancaster]'s personal connexions less magnificent than his feudal dignities. As a grandson of Henry III, he was the first cousin of the king. Through his mother, Blanche of Artois, Queen of Navarre and Countess of Champagne, he was the grandson of the valiant Robert of Artois, who had fallen at Mansura, and the great-grandson of Louis VIII of France. His half-sister, Joan of Champagne, was the wife of Philip the Fair,so that the French king was his brother-in-law as well as his cousin, and Isabella, Edward's consort, was his niece..."

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1981, Micropaedia, Vol VI, p343, Louis VIII: "called `Coeur-de-Lion', meaning `Lionheart', born 5Sep 1187 Paris, died 8 Nov 1226 Montpensier Auvergne France, Capetian King of France from 1223 who spent most of his short reign adding the important lands of Toulouse and Languedoc to the royal domain.
"On 23 May 1200, he married Blancheof Castile, daughter of Alfonso VIII of Castile, who effectively acted as regent after Louis' death. In 1212 Louis seized Saint-Omer and Aire to prevent a powerful Flanders from being on the flank of his country of Artois. In 1216, after the barons rebelling against King John of England had offered his throne to Louis in return for his aid, Louis went to England to aid the rebels. Initially he was successful, but eventually he was defeated at sea and suffered defections. In 1217, when peace was concluded at Kingston, Louis was secretly paid 10,000 marks. In 1226 he launched a successful crusade against the Albigensian heretics (believers in two separate sources as the creators of good and evil).
"Louis was the firstCapetian to grant appanages on a large scale and to have a reversion clause that made alienation of royal property more difficult. Louis also developed other particular rights for the kingship, such as the concept that fealty was sworn not onlyto the individual king but also to the kingship. His eldest son, Louis IX (afterward Saint Louis), peacefully succeeded him while his other sons received appanages."

Europe in the Middle Ages, Robert S Hoyt, 1957, Harcourt Brace & Co, p468: "...Louis is best known in history as the alleged createor of the Capetian system of appanages. Actually he did not originate the granting of lands from the royal domain to younger sons, but when he resumed the practice the domain had grown so large that any substantial fief, or appanage, granted from it was almost cerain to have important political consequences. On his death Louis VIII left a will to be executed by his oldest son, (Saint) Louis IX, directing that when his sons came of age his second son should be given Artois, his third son, Alphonse, who married the heiress of Toulouse, should have Poitou, and his youngest son, Charles, whom we shall meet later as King of the Two Sicilies and founder of the Angevin royalhouse of Naples, was to have Anjou..."
p623: "Genealogical Table III, The Capetian Dynasty, Louis VIII, King of France 1223-1226, Mar Blanche of Castile..."

The Wall Chart of World History, Edward Hull, 1988, Studio Editions, France 1223: "Louis VIII, Son of Philip II, King of France 1223-1226..."

ANCESTRAL FILE
Ancestral File Ver 4.10 8XJD-DK.

INTERNATIONAL GENEALOGICAL INDEX
IGI Birth T990834-7-1396383 Louis VIII King of FRANCE Father Philippe II King of FRANCE Mother Isabelle De HAINAUT Sep 1187 Paris Seine France.

IGI Marriage T990835-24-1396383 Louis VIII King of FRANCE Spouse Blanca Princess of CASTILE 23 May 1200 Pont-Audemer Eure France.

   Marriage Information:

Louis married Queen Blanche Castile FRANCE, daughter of King Alfonso CASTILE, VIII and Queen Eleanor England CASTILE, on 23 May 1200 in Pont Audemer, Eure, Normandy, France. (Queen Blanche Castile FRANCE was born in Mar 1188 in Valencia, Valencia, Spain, died on 27 Nov 1252 in Paris, Seine, France and was buried in Abbey, Maubuisson, Seine-et-Oise, France.)