When Louis VIII succeeded his father Philip on the throne, it was remarked with joy by the lovers of legitimacy that he was descended by his mother, Isabella of Hainault, from Charles of Lorraine, the last prince of Charlemagne’s blood, and that he thus united the rights of Carlovingian and Capetian. He was feeble in person, and is said not to have been endowed with much capacity; but the sage policy of Philip Augustus, together with the impulse he had given to affairs, continued to direct them, and to render France triumphant over her enemies. Henry III lost the towns of Niort and La Rochelle, and was driven by Louis from Poitou; yet so little did the English feel the loss of this province, that it is scarcely noticed by the historians of the island. The barons were so much occupied with jealousy of their sovereign and of his power, that Henry could procure or send no aid to his French provinces. A feeble expedition was at length fitted out, which preserved Gascony to England, but recovered nothing. A singular cause of contention arose about this time in Flanders. Baldwin, its last count, had been one of the leaders of the Fifth Crusade, which, in the commencement of the century, took Constantinople from the Greeks. He had been elected emperor of Romania, and had been the first of the Latin dynasty which reigned over it. Soon after, in the year 1205, he had been taken prisoner by the Bulgarians, and had not since been heard of. His daughter Joan succeeded to the county of Flanders, and had married Ferdinand (Ferrand), prince of Portugal, who had opposed Philip Augustus, and who was taken prisoner by that monarch at the battle of Bouvines. Joan took no steps to liberate her husband, or to pay his ransom, when an aged man appeared in Flanders, calling himself Count Baldwin, and giving an account of his long captivity and recent escape from the Bulgarians. Joan denied the identity of this person with her father; Louis VIII was of her opinion; while Henry III treated and allied himself with him as the veritable Baldwin. The self-entitled count appeared before King Louis at Péronne, offering proofs of his identity; but unfortunately he could not recall the place where he had done homage to Philip Augustus, nor the place where he had been knighted, nor yet the place and day of his marriage. Whether he really could not make answer to these questions, or whether age had troubled his memory, the old man was condemned as a pretender, and the countess Joan soon after caused him to be hanged. The common people still persisted in giving credit to his identity with Count Baldwin, and looked on Joan as the murderer of her father. Henry III in no way supported this his unfortunate ally. [Illustration: LOUIS VIII (From an old French print)] [Sidenote: [1204-1226 A.D.]]