But passions were too rampant and ambitions, too indomitable for evil thus to be rooted out entirely. The Peace of God only multiplied perjurers without diminishing assassins. Five years later another law known as the “Truce of God” was substituted for it. The councils which proclaimed this did not try to stop the flow of all human passions but to control them and regulate war according to laws of honour and humanity. Recourse to force was no longer forbidden to those who could invoke no other law, but the employment of this means was submitted to wise restrictions. All military attack and all shedding of blood was forbidden from sunset Wednesday evening to sunrise Monday morning, as well as on all fast and feast days. A perpetual inviolability was accorded the churches, unarmed clerics, and monks, while the protection of the truce was extended to the peasants, their flocks, and implements of tillage. Promulgated first in Aquitaine, this wise and beneficial law was adopted throughout almost all Gaul, where the lords swore to observe it; and although it was often violated and soon fell into desuetude, it did much good in softening the manners of the nation and was the finest work of the mediæval clergy. Rumour spread that a horrible malady known as the “sacred fire” would punish infractors of the truce. The weakling king Henry, through “unreasonable pride,” was almost the only one to refuse to recognise it within his estates, giving as a pretext that it was an encroachment of the clergy upon his authority. This king has left no creditable impression upon history.[d] Save for a few expeditions into Normandy, most of which were unfortunate, he did nothing. In 1046 he refused the homage of the duke of Upper and Lower Lorraine, and even allowed the count of Flanders to declare for the emperor of Germany as suzerain.[c] It is said that from fear of unwittingly marrying a wife who might be allied to him by ties of blood, he sought one at the extremities of Europe, and married for his third wife the princess Anne, daughter of the grand duke Yaroslaff of Russia. Henry had three sons by this marriage, of whom he caused the eldest, Philip, to be made joint king in the last year of his life. He died in 1060 after a reign of twenty-nine years.[d] _Deeds of the Great Barons_ [Sidenote: [1028-1054 A.D.]] The king did nothing, but the great lords accomplished much. Three especially filled France with the noise of their ambitions and their wars. Robert, surnamed the Magnificent by the nobles and the Devil by the people, had usurped the ducal crown of Normandy by poisoning his brother Richard III and his chief barons at a feast (1028). By force of energy and courage he crushed the opposition which his crime aroused and, uncontested sovereign of Normandy, interfered with all his neighbours.