Note 463 — Chapter XIX · THE REIGN OF SAINT LOUIS

The treaty here referred to is that of Paris, negotiated by Louis IX. and Henry III. in 1259. By it the English king renounced his claim to Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Touraine, and Poitou, while Louis IX. ceded to Henry the Limousin, Périgord, and part of Saintonge, besides the reversion of Agenais and Quercy. The territories thus abandoned by the French were to be annexed to the duchy of Guienne, for which Henry III. was to render homage to the French king, just as had been rendered by the English sovereigns before the conquests of Philip Augustus. Manifestly Louis IX.'s chief motive in yielding possession of lands he regarded as properly his was to secure peace with England and to get the homage of the English king for Guienne. For upwards of half a century the relations of England and France had been strained by reason of the refusal of Henry III. to recognize the conquests of Philip Augustus and to render the accustomed homage. The treaty of Paris was important because it regulated the relations of France and England to the outbreak of the Hundred Years' War. It undertook to perpetuate the old division of French soil between the English and French monarchs—an arrangement always fruitful of discord and destined, more than anything else, to bring on the great struggle of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries between the two nations [see p. 417 ff.].