He summoned the crown's vassals to a parliament; and, "What think you," he asked them, "should be done to a vassal who would fain hold land without owning a lord, and who goeth against the fealty and homage due from him and his predecessors ?" The answer was, that the lord ought in that case to take back the fief as his own property.

"As my name is Louis," said the king, "the Comet of La Marche doth claim to hold land in such wise, land which hath been a fief of France since the days of the valiant King Clovis, who won all Aquitaine from King Alaric, a pagan without faith or creed, and all the country to the Pyrenean mount." And the barons promised the king their energetic co-operation.
The war was pushed on zealously by both sides.

Henry III., King of England, sent to Louis messengers charged to declare to him that his reason for breaking the truce concluded between them was, that he regarded it as his duty towards his step-father, the Count of La Marche, to defend him by arms.

Louis answered that, for his own part, he had scrupulously observed the truce, and had no idea of breaking it; but he considered that he had a perfect right to punish a rebellious vassal.

In this young King of France, this docile son of an able mother, none knew what a hero there was, until he revealed himself on a sudden.