more powerful than himself in the extent and population of their states.
But lord and peasant, layman and ecclesiastic, castle and country and the
churches of France, were not long discovering that, if the kingdom was
small, it had verily a king. Louis did not direct to a distance from
home his ambition and his efforts; it was within his own dominion, to
check the violence of the strong against the weak, to put a stop to the
quarrels of the strong amongst themselves, to make an end, in France at
least, of unrighteousness and devastation, and to establish there some
sort of order and some sort of justice, that he displayed his energy and
his perseverance. "He was animated," says Suger, "by a strong sense of
equity; to air his courage was his delight; he scorned inaction; he
opened his eyes to see the way of discretion; he broke his rest and was
unwearied in his solicitude." Suger has recounted in detail sixteen of
the numerous expeditions which Louis undertook into the interior, to
accomplish his work of repression or of exemplary chastisement.
Bouchard, Lord of Montmorency, Matthew de Beaumont, Dreux de Mouchy-le-
Chatel, Ebble de Roussi, Leon de Mean, Thomas de Marle, Hugh de Crecy,
William de la Roche-Guyon, Hugh du Puiset, and Amaury de Montfort
learned, to their cost, that the king was not to be braved with impunity.
"Bouchard, on taking up arms one day against him, refused to accept his
sword from the hands of one of his people who offered it to him, and said
by way of boast to the countess his wife, 'Noble countess, give thou
joyously this glittering sword to the count thy spouse: he who taketh it
from thee as count will bring it back to thee as king.' "In this very
campaign, Bouchard," by his death," says Suger, "restored peace to the
kingdom, and took away himself and his war to the bottomless pit of
hell." Hugh du Puiset had frequently broken his oaths of peace and
recommenced his devastations and revolts; and Louis resumed his course of
hunting him down, "destroyed the castle of Puiset, threw down the walls,
dug up the wells, and razed it completely to the ground, as a place