num_pages: 296
description: In 1215 a group of English barons dissatisfied with the weak and despicable King John decided that they needed a new monarch. They wanted a strong experienced man of royal blood and they found him on the other side of the Channel: Louis eldest son and heir of the king of France.Louis emerges as a nearly man: nearly King of England nearly a successful military campaigner and nearly the man who terminated the Albigensian crusades. But what he nearly did allows for Hanleys biography to touch on some of the most complex issues of the early thirteenth century.Alice Taylor TLSIn this fascinating biography of Englands least-known kingand the first to be written in EnglishCatherine Hanley explores the life and times of Louis the Lion before during and beyond his quest for the English throne. She illuminates the national and international context of his 1216 invasion and explains why and how after sixteen fruitless months he failed to make himself King Louis I of England. Hanley also explores Louiss subsequent reign over France until his untimely death on the Albigensian Crusade. Published eight centuries after the creation of Magna Carta and on the 800th anniversary of Louiss proclamation as king this fascinating story is a colorful tale of national culture power and politics that brings a long-forgotten life out of the shadows of history.
language: English
title: Louis: The French Prince Who Invaded England
publisher: Yale University Press