Source--Jean, Sire de Joinville, _Histoire de Saint Louis_. Text edited by M. Joseph Noel (Natalis de Wailly) and published by the Societe de l'Histoire de France (Paris, 1868). Translated by James Hutton under title of _Saint Louis, King of France_ (London, 1868), _passim_. [Sidenote: The king's birth] As I have heard him say, he [Saint Louis] was born on the day of St. Mark the Evangelist,[446] shortly after Easter. On that day the cross is carried in procession in many places, and in France they are called black crosses. It was therefore a sort of prophecy of the great numbers of people who perished in those two crusades, i.e., in that to Egypt, and in that other, in the course of which he died at Carthage;[447] for many great sorrows were there on that account in this world, and many great joys are there now in Paradise on the part of those who in those two pilgrimages died true crusaders. [Sidenote: His early training] God, in whom he put his trust, preserved him ever from his infancy to the very last; and especially in his infancy did He preserve him when he stood in need of help, as you will presently hear. As for his soul, God preserved it through the pious instructions of his mother, who taught him to believe in God and to love Him, and placed about him none but ministers of religion. And she made him, while he was yet a child, attend to all his prayers and listen to the sermons on saints' days. He remembered that his mother used sometimes to tell him that she would rather he were dead than that he should commit a deadly sin. [Sidenote: Difficulties at the beginning of his reign] Sore need of God's help had he in his youth, for his mother, who came out of Spain, had neither relatives nor friends in all the realm of France. And because the barons of France saw that the king was an infant, and the queen, his mother, a foreigner, they made the count of Boulogne, the king's uncle, their chief, and looked up to him as their lord.[448] After the king was crowned, some of the barons asked of the queen to bestow upon them large domains; and because she would do nothing of the kind all the barons assembled at Corbei.[449] And the sainted king related to me how neither he nor his mother, who were at Montlheri,[450] dared to return to Paris, until the citizens of Paris came, with arms in their hands, to escort them. He told me, too, that from Montlheri to Paris the road was filled with people, some with and some without weapons, and that all cried unto our Lord to give him a long and happy life, and to defend and preserve him from his enemies.... [Sidenote: Louis takes the cross]