astounding news of his arrival were true, “Go tell your king I am at hand as you see!” At the news of the ferocity and resolution of the enemy, Louis, “knowing him to be fierce and of a most bitter temper, as a bear robbed of its whelps rages in the forest,” hastily retreated, and Henry, as wise a general as he was excellent an actor, fell back to Rouen.  Meanwhile he sent to Britanny a force of Brabantines, whom alone he could trust.  They surrounded the rebels at Dol; and before Henry, “forgetting food and sleep” and riding “as though he had flown,” could reach the place, most of his foes were slain.  The castle where the rest had taken refuge surrendered, and he counted among his prisoners the Earl of Chester, Ralph of Fougeres, and a hundred other nobles.  The battle of Dol practically decided the war.  It seemed vain to fight against Henry’s good luck.  A few Flemings once crossed the Norman border, and were defeated and drowned in retreat by the bridge breaking.  “The very elements fight for the Normans!” cried the baffled and disheartened Louis.  “When I entered Normandy my army perished for want of water, now this one is destroyed by too much water.”  In despair he sought to save himself by playing the part of mediator; and in September Henry met his sons at Gisors to discuss terms of peace.  His terms were refused and the meeting broke up; but Henry remained practically master of the situation.

Meanwhile in England the rebellion had broken out in July.  The Scottish army ravaged the north; the Earl of Leicester, with an army of Flemings which he had collected by the help of Louis and the younger Henry, landed on the coast of Suffolk, where Hugh Bigod was ready to welcome him.  De Lucy and Bohun hurried from the north to meet this formidable danger, and with the help of the Earls of Cornwall, Arundel, and Gloucester, they defeated Leicester in a great battle at Fornham on the 17th of October.  The earl himself was taken prisoner, and 10,000 of his foreign troops were slain.  He and his wife were sent by Henry’s orders to Normandy, and there thrown into prison.  A truce was made with Scotland till the end of March.  The king of France and the younger Henry abandoned hope, “for they saw that God was with the king;” and there was a general pause in the war.

With the spring of 1174, however, the strife raged again on all sides.  Ireland rose in rebellion.  William of Scotland marched into England supported by a Flemish force.  Roger Mowbray, and probably the Bishop of Durham, were in league with him.  Earl Ferrers fortified his castles in Derby and Stafford; Leicester Castle was still held by the Earl of Leicester’s knights; Huntingdon by the Scot king’s brother; and the Earl of Norfolk was joined in June by a picked body of Flemings.  The king’s castles at Norwich, Northampton, and Nottingham, were taken by the rebels, and a formidable line of enemies stretched right across mid-England.  At the same time France and Flanders threatened invasion with a strong fleet, and “so great an army as had not been seen for many years.”  Count Philip, who had set his heart on the promised Kent, and on winning entrance into the lands of the Cistercian wool-growers of Lincolnshire, swore before Louis and his nobles that within fifteen days he would attack England; the younger Henry joined him at Gravelines in June, and they only waited for a fair wind to cross the Channel.