As soon as possible, Blanche had Louis crowned, a ceremony which did not imply that he was to be considered out of her tutelage, but which did give him a certain amount of prestige and consequent protection. The coronation, which took place on November 29, 1226, at Rheims, was but poorly attended by the nobles. Already there was discontent, and the great house of Dreux, led by the crafty and unscrupulous Pierre Mauclerc, Count of Brittany, was at the head of the disaffected. Count Thibaud de Champagne, son of Blanche's first cousin, would have come to the coronation, but Blanche ordered the gates of Rheims closed against him; for it was currently rumored, though the rumor was entirely without justification, that Louis VIII. had died very suddenly because of poison administered by Thibaud. But, with or without the presence of the great barons, Louis IX. was crowned, and Blanche made for herself and her son such friends as she could. In England Henry III., always restive under the thought of the losses sustained by his father in France, was continually scheming to regain the lost territories. He formed alliances with some of the chief lords of Poitou, entered into negotiations for the hand of Yolande, daughter of Pierre Mauclerc, and made abortive, but nevertheless startling, preparations for a descent upon the coast of France. His allies among the discontented French nobility took up arms, inspired in part by the jealous Isabelle d'Angoulème, who had been the queen of John Lackland and was now Countess of Marche. Blanche promptly summoned the ban royal to assemble at Tours, whither she went with Louis in February, 1227. Count Thibaud de Champagne had been in treaty with the rebels and was marching with his forces as if to join them in Poitou. Tradition says that he was diverted by a secret message from Blanche; at any rate, he suddenly turned in his march and came to Tours, did homage to the boy king, and was graciously received by the queen regent. The defection of Thibaud upset the plans of the rebels, who quarrelled among themselves. Many of them came, one by one, to submit to Louis IX., and hostilities were suspended between the French and Richard of Cornwall, brother and representative of Henry III. During the truce which followed, Blanche was enabled to prosecute the unfinished war in Languedoc against Raymond VII. of Toulouse and the Albigensian heretics. One is surprised to find that certain churches in France refused at first to grant the king subsidies to conduct this crusade, and that it was only by the vigorous measures of Cardinal Remain that they were at length compelled to yield.