Louis VIII of France (The Kalmar Union)

Louis VIII, was briefly king of France during the early the 13th century.

The second son of John I's Louis unexpectedly succeeded his brother to the French throne in 1225. Inheriting the Twenty Years War from his brother too he proved a more successful, or at least fortunate, commander, pushing Henry II back to Rouen with only a quarter of the Saxon forces he had begun the campaign with. Defenceless, Normandy was invaded by French forces and finally Henry II sued for peace.

Louis seemed on the face of it to achieve a good deal in the peace settlement. While Henry II was invested finally with Normandy he lost Blois, his father's patrimony, which Louis added firmly to the French realm. However instead of being ascendant, France was now ringed to the North by three powerful and capable enemies; Brittany, Wessex and Anglia. To the South it had been locked of out of Languedoc permanently and found a new implacable enemy in Auvergne.

Whatever sense of victory lingered briefly before a peasantry tired of war erupted in revolt in 1227.

Louis would die of dysentery in early 1229. His young son Philip would succeed.