On the 12th of March and the 13th of June, 1303, at two assemblies of barons, prelates, and legists held at the Louvre, in presence of the king, which several historians have considered to have been states-general, one of the crown’s most intimate advisers, William of Plasian, proposed, against Boniface, a form of accusation which imputed to him, beyond his ambition and his claims to absolutism, crimes as improbable as they were hateful.  It was demanded that the Church should be governed by a lawful pope, and the king, as defender of the faith, was pressed to appeal to the convocation of a general council.  On the 24th of June, in the palace-garden, a great crowd of people assembled; and, after a sermon preached in French, the form of accusation against Boniface, and the appeal to the future council, were solemnly made public.  The pope meanwhile did not remain idle; he protested against the imputations of which he was the subject.  “Forty years ago,” he said, “we were admitted a doctor of laws, and learned that both powers, the temporal and the spiritual, be ordained of God.  Who can believe that such fatuity can have entered into our mind?  But who can also deny that the king is subject unto us on the score of sin? . . .  We be disposed to grant unto him every grace. . . .  So long as I was cardinal, I was French in heart; since then, we have testified how we do love the king. . . .  Without us, he would not have even one foot on the throne.  We do know all the secrets of the kingdom.  We do know how the Germans, the Burgundians, and the folks who speak the Oc tongue do love the king.  If he mend not, we shall know how to chastise him, and treat him as a little boy (sicut unum garcionem), though greatly against our will.”  On the 13th of April, Boniface declared Philip excommunicate if he persisted in preventing the prelates from attending at Rome.  Philip, being warned, effected the arrest at Troyes of the priest who was bringing the pope’s letter to his legate in France.  The legate took to flight.  Boniface, on his side, being warned that the king was appealing against him to an approaching council, declared by a bull, on the 15th of August, that it appertained to him alone to summon a council.  After this bull, there was full expectation that another would be launched, which would pronounce the deposition of the king.  And a new bull was actually prepared at Rome on the 5th of September, and was to be published on the 8th.  It did not expressly depose the king; it merely announced that measures would be taken more serious even than excommunication.  Philip had taken his precautions.  He had demanded and obtained from the great towns, churches, and universities more than seven hundred declarations of support in his appeal to the future council, and an engagement to take no notice of the decree which might be issued by the pope to release the king’s subjects from their oath of allegiance.  Only a few, and amongst them the Abbot of Citeaux,