"Love and protect justice and neither neglect nor despise, the complaints of the pauper." — Saint Louis

In the year 1259, three impoverished young boys of noble birth belonging to the abbey of the monks of St. Nicholas near Laon, who were being tutored there, were hunting on the abbey's grounds near its forest when, after following their prey of rabbits, they accidentally and illegally entered into the nearby forests of the lord of Coucy, Enguerran, who had recently become the lord of Coucy after his brother, Raoul, had died on crusade, and the lordship thus passed to him.

After these three youths were caught by the lords sergeants, Enguerran had them cruelly hung on the spot, without a trial, for the crime of poaching in his forests. the abbot of St. Nicolas who had them in his care learned of this, and was greatly distressed by it and mourned their deaths, went to King Louis IX and asked him to execute justice on the lord of Coucy for this crime.

As soon as he learnt of the lord of Coucy’s injustice, one especially egregious to the King, since the punishment had been caried out without a trial before.

King Louis IX summoned him to his court in order to answer in this case. Once he arrived, King Louis had the lord of Coucy seized and arrested by his guards, who was then taken to the Louvre to await trial before the King and the nobles of the kingdom.

The preeminent barons of France came to the King’s palace, and when they were assembled, the king summoned the lord of Coucy and forced him to respond in the aforementioned case. At first King Louis made a suggestion to the barons that the lord of Coucy should be condemned to a similar death that the three youths had suffered at his hands.Though after Louis counselled with the Barons, the King decided it would be just and more Christian not to answer cruelty with more cruelty but instead make the lord of Coucy give up many of his lands, pay large sums of gold and silver, and go on a penitential armed pilgrimage, or crusade, at his own expense to the east in order to advance the Christian cause overseas.

King Louis IX decided that the lord of Coucy should pay a sum of 10,000 livres parisis (approx. 285,000 gold francs), he should also finance the building of two chapels in which the souls of the three youths he had unlawfully executed would be able to be commemorated and prayers for their souls sung for them. The money would also be used in order to fund the building of a hospital, a cloister, and a church.

The large forest in which the crime had been committed was given to the good Christian monks of the abbey of St. Nicholas, who would now be able to draw the profits from it, such as the game within the forest, for instance, the deer, boar, rabbits, and birds, and the timber from the forest, such as from oak, beech, and pines, all highly prized materials used for construction.

Historian Jacques Le Goff wrote the following on this spectacular case:

"This affair, however, had strong reverberations in the historical memories of the chroniclers and illuminators, truly characterising the principles and attitudes of Saint Louis as a dispenser of justice. Among the principles and attitudes at work here we find the king’s desire to minimise feudal proceedings in favour of royal justice. his insistence on balancing respect for customs with the royal power’s superiority in making rulings, and his tendency to identify justice with severity and then to moderate it with a leniency that corresponded to the royal ideals of mercy and the king’s benevolence toward his barons.The king truly wanted to be the guarantor of justice and peace within his kingdom."