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 Court of Peers, whilst he saw the King of France
entering Normandy with a vast army in consequence of this sentence, and
place after place, castle af