King Louis IX is certainly worth memorializing as a pious man and a talented ruler of France. However, the descendant he shares with Franco prefers to overlook that Saint Louis is also memorable for an ill-conceived and disastrous crusading career that resulted from an excess of religious fervor and an utter disregard for a civilization and nations foreign to his own.
Saint Louis' unprovoked wars of aggression brought needless misery and death to thousands of Muslims -and Christians- far away from the shores of France. Indeed, as fate would have it, Louis himself fell victim to his own appalling folly and was among the five members of his own family brought home to France in a box. Interesting to see in the above statement that Louis' remote descendant and namesake repeats the same folly, if in a non-lethal and less memorable way.
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