back all that he is winning from
me now."

It was by diplomacy that John hoped to parry the attack which he knew
he could not repel by force. Early in the year he had complained to
the Pope of the long course of insult and aggression pursued toward
him by Philip, and begged Innocent to interfere in his behalf.
Thereupon Philip, in his turn, sent messengers and letters to the
Pope, giving his own version of his relations with John, and
endeavoring to justify his own conduct. On May 26th, Innocent
announced to both kings that he was about to despatch the abbots of
Casamario, Trois Fontaines, and Dun as commissioners to arbitrate upon
the matters in dispute between them.

These envoys seem to have been delayed on their journey; and when they
reached France they, for some time, found it impossible to ascertain
whether Philip would or would not accept their arbitration. When at
last he met them in council at Mantes on August 26th, he told them
bluntly that he "was not bound to take his orders from the apostolic
see as to his rights over a fief and a vassal of his own, and that the
matter in dispute between the two kings was no business of the
Pope's." John meanwhile had, on August 11th, suddenly quitted his
passive attitude and laid siege to Alencon; but he retired on Philip's
approach four days later. An attempt which he made to regain Brezolles
was equally ineffectual. Philip, on the other hand, was now resolved
to bring the war to a crisis. It was probably straight from the
council at Mantes that he marched to the siege of Chateau Gaillard.

Chateau Gaillard was a fortress of far other importance than any of
the castles which both parties had been so lightly winning, losing,
and winning again, during the last ten years. It was the key of the
Seine above Rouen, the bulwark raised by Richard Coeur de Lion to
protect his favorite city against attack from France. Not till the
fortifications which commanded the river at Les Andelys were either
destroyed or in his own hands could Philip hope to win the Norman
capital. And those fortifications were of no common order. Their
builder was the greatest, as he was the last, of the "great builders"
of Anjou; and his "fair castle on the Rock of Andelys" was at once the
supreme outcome of their architectural genius, and the earliest and
most perfect example in Europe of the new development which the
crusaders' study of the mighty works of Byzantine or even earlier
conquerors, quicke