would willingly go to his court to answer before his judges, and to show entire obedience in the matter, but that he must have a safe-conduct.  King Philip replied, but with neither heart nor visage unmoved, ’Willingly; let him come in peace and safety.’  ‘And return so too, my lord?’ said the bishop.  ‘Yes,’ rejoined the king, ‘if the decision of his peers allow him.’  And when the envoys from England entreated him to grant to the King of England to go and return in safety, the King of France was wroth, and answered with his usual oath, ’No, by all the saints of France, unless the decision tally therewith.’  ‘My lord king,’ rejoined the bishop, ’the Duke of Normandy cannot come unless there come also the King of England, since the duke and the king are one and the same person.  The baronage of England would never allow it in any way, and if the king were willing, he would run, as you know, risk of imprisonment or death.’  King Philip answered him, ’How now, my lord bishop?  It is well known that my liegeman, the Duke of Normandy, by violence got possession of England.  And so, prithee, if a vassal increase in honor and power, shall his lord suzerain lose his rights?  Never!’

“King John was not willing to trust to chance and the decision of the French, who liked him not; and he feared above everything to be reproached with the shameful murder of Arthur.  The grandees of France, nevertheless, proceeded to a decision, which they could not do lawfully, since he whom they had to try was absent, and would have gone had he been able.”

The condemnation, not a whit the less, took full effect; and Philip Augustus thus recovered possession of nearly all the territories which his father, Louis VII., had kept but for a moment.  He added, in succession, other provinces to his dominions; in such wise that the kingdom of France, which was limited, as we have seen, under Louis the Fat, to the Ile-de-France and certain portions of Picardy and Orleanness, comprised besides, at the end of the reign of Philip Augustus, Vermandois, Artois, the two Vexins, French and Norman, Berri, Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Poitou, Touraine, and Auvergne.

In 1206 the territorial work of Philip Augustus was well nigh completed; but his wars were not over.  John Lackland, when worsted, kicked against the pricks, and was incessantly hankering, in his antagonism to the King of France, after hostile alliances and local conspiracies easy to hatch amongst certain feudal lords discontented with their suzerain.  John was on intimate terms with his nephew, Otho iv., Emperor of Germany and the foe of Philip Augustus, who had supported against him Frederick ii., his rival for the empire.  They prepared in concert for a grand attack upon the King of France, and they had won over to their coalition some of his most important vassals, amongst others, Renaud de Dampierre, Count of Boulogne.  Philip determined to divert their attack, whilst anticipating it, by an unexpected enterprise—­the