of Nangis, records some murmuring against the decision, which was
thought to be too lenient.^19
However, the king’s clemency was one of his last public acts. Beneath
the sweltering north African sun, a virulent disease was sweeping through
the crusader camp. It claimed Louis himself on 25 August, just as his
brother, King Charles of Sicily, was arriving off Tunis. It has often been
said that Alfonso of Eu perished on the same day as Louis, but various
well-informed sources suggest that, in fact, he succumbed a few weeks
later, on 14 September.^20 By contrast, it has been noted, quite rightly,
that the crusaders’journey home‘resembled a funeral cortege’. By the
time that the new king, Philip III, returned to France, he was accompan-
ied by the bodies of‘his father, brother, brother-in-law, wife and stillborn
son’.^21 Amidst such an outbreak of mortality, it is not surprising that few
chroniclers sawfit to record the fate of the count of Eu. Although there is
some debate in the sources, it would seem that he was interred at
Saint-Denis, near the king in whose service he had died.^22 By contrast,
it is worth noting that, a decade earlier, Alfonso’s wife, Countess Mary,
had been buried in the abbey of Foucarmont, the traditional resting place
of the counts of Eu.^23
Alfonso’s demise should have permitted the succession, at long last, of
his son and heir, John II. However, it has been suggested that the boy was
still under-age, and so another regency was required, which held onto the
reins of power for the next six or seven years. If so, then there was,
indeed, an obvious candidate to take on this role: the young man’s uncle
and namesake, the executor of Alfonso’s will.^24 Although it is not clear
when John IIfinally attained his majority, it could well have been at
around the time of his marriage to Beatrice of Châtillon, daughter of the
count of Saint-Pol. The bride herself is described in an eye-opening
passage in theChronique des comtes d’Eu. According to the over-excited
monastic author, Beatrice was‘regarded as the most beautiful woman in
France, except...that she had too large breasts, and if it had not been for
that, it was said that she would have been the wife of King Philip the Fair’
(^19) William of Nangis,Gesta sanctae memoriae Ludovici regis Franciae,inRHGF, xx, 452–5.
See also Jean Richard’s summary inSaint Louis: Crusader King of France, 325.
(^20) Obituaires de la province de Sens, vol. i, part 2, 656; andEx obituario ecclesiae Augensis,in
RHGF, xxiii, 450.
(^21) Tyerman,God’s War, 812.
(^22) See theChronique des comtes d’Eu, 444, and n. 3, which states that his epitaph could be
read in the chapel of Saint-Martin.
(^23) Ibid., 444–and see also below, 125.
(^24) See L. Carolus-Barré’s unsupported comments inLe procès de canonisation de Saint Louis
(1272–1297): essai de reconstitution(Rome, 1994), 167; and Vergé de Taillis,Chroniques
de l’abbaye royale de Maubuisson, 38.
108 The Angevins and Athens (c. 1267–1311)