Louis, just as Richard had, refused the incomplete satisfaction which had been offered him, and for nearly four years, spent by him on the coasts of Palestine and Syria since his departure from Damietta, from 1250 to 1254, he expended, in small works of piety, sympathy, protection, and care for the future of the Christian populations in Asia, his time, his strength, his pecuniary resources, and the ardor of a soul which could not remain icily abandoned to sorrowing over great desires unsatisfied.
An unexpected event occurred and brought about all at once a change in his position and his plans.

At the commencement of the year 1253, at Sidon, the ramparts of which he was engaged in repairing, he heard that his mother, Queen Blanche, had died at Paris on the 27th of November, 1252.

"He made so great mourning thereat," says Joinville, "that for two days no speech could be gotten of him.

After that he sent a chamber-man for to fetch me.

When I carne before him, in his chamber where he was alone, so soon as he got sight of me, he stretched forth his arms, and said to me, 'O, seneschal, I have lost my mother!'" It was a great loss both for the son and for the king.