persisted in backing the elect of pope and chapter. The pope
excommunicated the king. The king declared war against the Count of
Champagne; and went and besieged Vitry. Nearly all the town was built of
wood, and the besiegers set fire to it. The besieged fled for refuge to
a church, in which they were invested; and the fire reached the church,
which was entirely consumed, together with the thirteen hundred
inhabitants, men, women, and children, who had retreated thither. This
disaster made a great stir. St. Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux and the
leading ecclesiastical authority of the age, took the part of Count
Theobald. King Louis felt a lively sorrow, and sincere repentance. Soon
afterwards it became known in the West that the affairs of the Christians
were going ill in the East; that the town of Edessa had been re-taken by
the Turks, and all its inhabitants massacred. The kingdom of Jerusalem,
too, was in danger. Great was the emotion in Europe; and the cry of the
crusade was heard once more. Louis the Young, to appease his troubled
conscience, and to get reconciled with the pope, to say nothing of
sympathy for the national movement, assembled the grandees, laic and
ecclesiastical, of the kingdom, to deliberate upon the matter.

Deliberation was more prolonged, more frequently repeated, and more
indecisive than it had been at the time of the first crusade. Three
grand assemblies met, the first in 1145, at Bourges; the second in 1146,
at Vezelai, in Nivernais; and the third in 1147, at Etampes; all three
being called to investigate the expediency of a new crusade, and of the
king's participation in the enterprise. Not only was the question
seriously discussed, but extremely diverse opinions were expressed, both
amongst the rank and file of these assemblies, and amongst their most
illustrious members. There were two men whose talents and fame made them
conspicuous above all; Suger, Abbot of St. Denis, the intimate and able
adviser of the wise king, Louis the Fat, and St. Bernard, Abbot of