Philip for a year, on the understanding that if not
succored by John within that time they would receive the French King
as their lord; the rest stood passively looking on at the one real
struggle of the war, the struggle for Chateau Gaillard.

At length, on March 6, 1204, the Saucy Castle fell. Its fall opened
the way for a French advance upon Rouen; but before taking this
further step Philip deemed it politic to let the Pope's envoy, the
Abbot of Casamario, complete his mission by going to speak with John.
The abbot was received at a great council in London at the end of
March; the result was his return to France early in April, in company
with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the bishops of Norwich and Ely, and
the earls of Pembroke and Leicester, all charged with a commission "to
sound the French King, and treat with him about terms of peace." On
the French King's side the negotiation was a mere form; to whatever
conditions the envoys proposed, he always found some objection; and
his own demands were such as John's representatives dared not attempt
to lay before their sovereign--Arthur's restoration, or, if he were
dead, the surrender of his sister Eleanor, and the cession to Philip,
as her suzerain and guardian, of the whole Continental dominions of
the Angevin house.

Finally, Philip dropped the mask altogether, and made a direct offer,
not to John, but to John's Norman subjects, including the two lay
ambassadors. All those, he said, who within a year and a day would
come to him and do him homage for their lands should receive
confirmation of their tenure from him. Hereupon the two English earls,
after consulting together, gave him five hundred marks each, on the
express understanding that he was to leave them unmolested in the
enjoyment of their Norman lands for a twelvemonth and a day, and that
at the expiration of that time they would come and do homage for those
lands to him, if John had not meanwhile regained possession of the
duchy. Neither William the Marshal nor his colleague had any thought
of betraying or deserting John; as the Marshal's biographer says, they
"did not wish to be false"; and when they reached England they seem to
have frankly told John what they had done, and to have received no
blame for it.

The return of the English embassy was followed by a letter from the
commandant of Rouen--John's "trusty and well-beloved" Peter of
Preaux--informing the English King that "all the castles and towns