Saint-Louis was but a boy of eleven when he succeeded to the throne on the death of his father, and a coalition of the great nobles was immediately formed to take advantage of his minority; but the wisdom, prudence, and piety of his mother, Blanche of Castile, not only preserved the crown for him until he came of age, but also stood him in great service during the years of his reign, especially in those in which he was absent from the kingdom on his ill-starred crusades. One of her most beneficent deeds has been immortalized by the modern painter, Luc-Olivier-Merson, in a noble mural painting,--the delivery of the prisoners held in bondage by the chapitre de Paris (Notre-Dame), several inhabitants of Châtenay who had incurred the displeasure of the ecclesiastical authorities, and who were so maltreated in their dungeons that the lives of several of them were despaired of. The queen at first sent a civil request to the chapter to release the captives under bonds, but the churchmen returned an uncivil refusal and redoubled their severities; whereupon she proceeded in person to the prison with her son, struck the doors with her bâton, her guards immediately broke them down, and the liberated serfs, men, women, and children, flocked out tumultuously to thank their deliverers on their knees. The canons protested furiously, but the discreet regent, knowing their sensitive point, allowed them to rage openly and contented herself with seizing their temporal revenues. This immediately brought them to terms; in the smoothest of phrases they besought an accommodation, and speedily agreed to set at liberty, in consideration of a certain sum, all those whom they had unjustly incarcerated. It would scarcely have been thought that this gracious sovereign lady, one of the noblest figures among the women of France, could have been made the object of malicious slander; but one of her latest biographers, M. Élie Berger, thinks it worth while to defend her seriously against the "legend born of jealousy and impotence" of having been the mistress of the Cardinal de Saint-Ange and of the Comte Thibaut de Champagne. His defence, apart from the inherent improbability of the story, seems to be quite convincing.