as they had provided no sort of means to support them.  But the history of those times furnishes many instances of the like want of design in the most momentous affairs, and shows that it is in vain to look for political causes for the actions of men, who were most commonly directed by a brute caprice, and were for the greater part destitute of any fixed principles of obedience or resistance.  The king, sensible of the weakness of his barons, fell upon some of their castles with such timely vigor, and treated those whom he had reduced with so much severity, that the rest immediately and abjectly submitted.  He levied a severe tax upon their fiefs; and thinking himself more strengthened by this treasure than the forced service of his barons, he excused the personal attendance of most of them, and, passing into Normandy, he raised an army there.  He found that his enemies had united their forces, and invested the castle of Mirebeau, a place of importance, in which his mother, from whom he derived his right to Guienne, was besieged.  He flew to the relief of this place with the spirit of a greater character, and the success was answerable.  The Breton and Poitevin army was defeated, his mother was freed, and the young Duke of Brittany and his sister were made prisoners.  The latter he sent into England, to be confined in the castle of Bristol; the former he carried with him to Rouen.  The good fortune of John now seemed to be at its highest point; but it was exalted on a precipice; and this great victory proved the occasion of all the evils which afflicted his life.

[Sidenote:  A.D. 1203.]

John was not of a character to resist the temptation of having the life of his rival in his hands.  All historians are as fully agreed that he murdered his nephew as they differ in the means by which he accomplished that crime.  But the report was soon spread abroad, variously heightened in the circumstances by the obscurity of the fact, which left all men at liberty to imagine and invent, and excited all those sentiments of pity and indignation which a very young prince of great hopes, cruelly murdered by his uncle, naturally inspire.  Philip had never missed an occasion of endeavoring to ruin the King of England:  and having now acquired an opportunity of accomplishing that by justice which he had in vain sought by ambition, he filled every place with complaints of the cruelty of John, whom, as a vassal to the crown of France, the king accused of the murder of another vassal, and summoned him to Paris to be tried by his peers.  It was by no means consistent either with the dignity or safety of John to appear to this summons.  He had the argument of kings to justify what he had done.  But as in all great crimes there is something of a latent weakness, and in a vicious caution something material is ever neglected, John, satisfied with removing his rival, took no thought about his enemy; but whilst he saw himself sentenced for non-appearance in the