Page 131 of 155

     [* Trivet p. 144. Gul. Britto, lib. vii. Ann.
     Waverl, p. 168.]

When this bulwark of Normandy was once subdued, all the province lay open to the inroads of Philip; and the king of England despaired of being any longer able to defend it. He secretly prepared vessels for a scandalous flight; and, that the Normans might no longer doubt of his resolution to abandon them, he ordered the fortifications of Pont de l’Arche, Moulineux, and Monfort l’Amauri to be demolished. Not daring to repose confidence in any of his barons whom he believed to be universally engaged in a conspiracy against him, he intrusted the government of the province to Arenas Martin and Lupicaire, two mercenary Brabanons, whom he had retained in his service. Philip, now secure of his prey, pushed his conquests with vigor and success against the dismayed Normans. Falaise was first besieged; and Lupicare, who commanded in this impregnable fortress, after surrendering the place, enlisted himself with his troops in the service of Philip, and carried on hostilities against his ancient master. Caen, Coutance, Seez, Evreux, Baieux, soon fell into the hands of the French monarch, and all the lower Normandy was reduced under his dominion! To forward his enterprises on the other division of the province, Gui de Thouars, at the head of the Bretons, broke into the territory, and took Mount St. Michael, Avranches, and all the other fortresses in that neighborhood. The Normans, who abhorred the French yoke and who would have defended themselves to the last extremity, if their prince had appeared to conduct them, found no resource but in submission; and every city opened its gates as soon as Philip appeared before it. Rouen alone, Arques, and Verneuil determined to maintain their liberties; and formed a confederacy for mutual defence.

1205.

Philip began with the siege of Rouen: the inhabitants were so inflamed with hatred to France, that on the appearance of his army, they fell on all the natives of that country whom they found within their walls, and put tham to death. But after the French king had begun his operations with success, and had taken some of their outworks, the citizens, seeing no resource, offered to capitulate; and demanded only thirty days to advertise their prince of their danger, and to require succors against the enemy. Upon the expiration of the term, as no supply had arrived, they opened their gates to Philip;[*] and the whole province soon after imitated the example, and submitted to the victor. Thus was this important territory reunited to the crown of France, about three centuries after the cession of it by Charles the Simple to Rollo, the first duke; and the Normans, sensible that this conquest was probably final, demanded the privilege of being governed by French laws; which Philip, making a few alterations on the ancient Norman customs, readily granted them. But the French monarch had too much ambition and genius to stop in his present career of success. He carried his victorious army into the western provinces; soon reduced Anjou, Maine, Touraine, and part of Poictou;[**] and in this manner the French crown, during the reign of one able and active prince, received such an accession of power and grandeur, as, in the ordinary course of things, it would have required several ages to attain.

John, on his arrival in England, that he might cover the disgrace of his own conduct, exclaimed loudly against his barons, who, he pretended, had deserted his standard in Normandy; and he arbitrarily extorted from them a seventh of all their movables, as a punishment for the offence.[***]

     [* Trivet, p. 147. Ypod. Neust. p. 469.]

     [** Trivet, p 149]

     [*** M. Paris, p. 146. M. West. p. 265.]

Soon after he forced them to grant him a scutage of two marks and a half on each knights’ fee for an expedition into Normandy; but he did not attempt to execute the service for which he pretended to exact it. Next year, he summoned all the barons of his realm to attend him on this foreign expedition, and collected ships from all the seaports; but meeting with opposition from some of his ministers, and abandoning his design, he dismissed both fleet and army, and then renewed his exclamations against the barons for deserting him. He next put to sea with a small army, and his subjects believed that he was resolved to expose himself to the utmost hazard for the defence and recovery of his dominions; but they were surprised, after a few days, to see him return again into harbor, without attempting anything.

1206.

In the subsequent season, he had the courage to carry his hostile measures a step farther. Gui de Thouars, who governed Brittany, jealous of the rapid progress made by his ally, the French king, promised to join the king of England with all his forces; and John ventured abroad with a considerable army, and landed at Rochelle. He marched to Angers, which he took and reduced to ashes. But the approach of Philip with an army threw him into a panic; and he immediately made proposals for peace, and fixed a place of interview with his enemy; but instead of keeping this engagement, he stole off with his army, embarked at Rochelle, and returned, loaded with new shame and disgrace, into England. The mediation of the pope procured him at last a truce for two years with the French monarch;[*] almost all the transmarine provinces were ravished from him; and his English barons, though harassed with arbitrary taxes and fruitless expeditions, saw themselves and their country baffled and affronted in every enterprise.

     [* Rymer, vol. i. p. 141.]

In an age when personal valor was regarded as the chief accomplishment, such conduct as that of John, always disgraceful, must be exposed to peculiar contempt; and he must thenceforth have expected to rule his turbulent vassals with a very doubtful authority. But the government exercised by the Norman princes had wound up the royal power to so high a pitch, and so much beyond the usual tenor of the feudal constitutions, that it still behoved him to be debased by new affronts and disgraces, ere his barons could entertain the view of conspiring against him in order to retrench his prerogatives.

The church, which at that time declined not a contest with the most powerful and most vigorous monarchs, took first advantage of John’s imbecility; and, with the most aggravating circumstances of insolence and scorn, fixed her yoke upon him.

1207.

The papal chair was then filled by Innocent III., who, having attained that dignity at the age of thirty-seven years, and being endowed with a lofty and enterprising genius gave full scope to his ambition, and attempted, perhaps more openly than any of his predecessors, to convert that superiority which was yielded him by all the European princes, into a real dominion over them. The hierarchy, protected by the Roman pontiff, had already carried to an enormous height its usurpations upon the civil power; but in order to extend them farther, and render them useful to the court of Rome, it was necessary to reduce the ecclesiastics themselves under an absolute monarchy, and to make them entirely dependent on their spiritual leader. For this purpose, Innocent first attempted to impose taxes at pleasure upon the clergy; and in the first year of this century, taking advantage of the popular frenzy for crusades, he sent collectors over all Europe, who levied by his authority the fortieth of all ecclesiastical revenues for the relief of the Holy Land, and received the voluntary contributions of the laity to a like amount.[*] The same year, Hubert, archbishop of Canterbury, attempted another innovation, favorable to ecclesiastical and papal power: in the king’s absence, he summoned, by his legantine authority, a synod of all the English clergy, contrary to the inhibition of Geoffrey Fitz-Peter, the chief justiciary; and no proper censure was ever passed on this encroachment, the first of the kind, upon the royal power. But a favorable incident soon after happened, which enabled so aspiring a pontiff as Innocent to extend still farther his usurpations on so contemptible a prince as John.