in return for their rhymes. It was this wine that the gigantic John Lord of Joinville, Seneschal of Champagne under Thibault, and chronicler of the Seventh Crusade, was in the habit of consuming warm and undiluted, by the advice of his physicians, on account, as he himself mentions, of his 'large head and cold stomach;' a practice which seems to have scandalised that pious and ascetic monarch St. Louis, who was careful to temper his own potations with water. The king was most likely not unacquainted with the wine, as a roll of the expenses incurred at his coronation at Reims, in 1226, shows that 991 livres were spent in wine on that occasion, when, in consequence of the vacancy of the archiepiscopal see, the crown was placed upon his head by Jacques de Bazoche, Bishop of Soissons. [Illustration] Henry of Andelys, a compatriot of the engineer Brunel, who flourished, if a poet can be said to flourish, in the latter half of the thirteenth century, has extolled the wines of Epernay and Hautvillers, and mentioned that of Reims, in his poem entitled the 'Bataille des Vins.' He informs us at the outset that 'the great King Philip Augustus,' whom state records prove to have had a score of vineyards in different parts of France,[21] was very fond of 'good white wine.' Anxious to make a choice of the best, he issued invitations to all the most renowned _crûs_, French and foreign, and forty-six different vintages responded to this appeal; amongst them Hautvillers and Epernay, described as 'vin d'Auviler' and 'vin d'Espernai le Bacheler.' The king's chaplain, an English priest, makes a preliminary examination, resulting in the summary rejection of many competitors, till at length, as Argenteuil--'clear as oil'--and Pierrefitte are disputing as to their respective merits, Epernay and Hautvillers simultaneously exclaim, 'Argenteuil, thou wishest to degrade all the wines at this table. By God, thou playest too much the part of constable. We excel Châlons and Reims, remove gout from the loins, and support all kings.'[22] But lo, up jumps the 'vin d'Ausois,' the 'Osey' of so many of our English mediæval poets, with the reproach, 'Epernay, thou art too disloyal; thou hast not the right of speaking in court;'[23] and enumerates the blessings which he and his demoiselle 'la Mosele' confer upon the Germans.[24] La Rochelle in turn reproves Ausois, and extols the strength of his own wines, and those of Angoulême, Bordeaux, Saintes, and Poitou, and boasts of the welcome accorded to them in the northern states of Europe, including England, to which the districts he mentions then belonged.[25] [Illustration: VINTAGERS OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY (From a /MS./ of the Dialogues de St. Grégoire).]