superiority over his rival. When, after Richard's death, he had to do
with John Lackland, cowardly and insolent, knavish and addle-pated,
choleric, debauched, and indolent, an intriguing subordinate on the
throne on which he made pretence to be the most despotic of kings, Philip
had over him, even more than over his brother Richard, immense
advantages. He made such use of them that after six years' struggling,
from 1199 to 1205, he deprived John of the greater part of his French
possessions, Anjou, Normandy, Touraine, Maine, and Poitou. Philip would
have been quite willing to dispense with any legal procedure by way of
sanction to his conquests, but John furnished him with an excellent
pretext; for on the 3d of April, 1203, he assassinated with his own hand,
in the tower of Rouen, his young nephew Arthur, Duke of Brittany, and in
that capacity vassal of Philip Augustus, to whom he was coming to do
homage. Philip had John, also his vassal, cited before the court of the
barons of France, his peers, to plead his defence of this odious act.
"King John," says the contemporary English historian Matthew Paris, "sent
Eustace, Bishop of Ely, to tell King Philip that he would willingly go to
his court to answer before his judges, and to show entire obedience in
the matter, but that he must have a safe-conduct. King Philip replied,
but with neither heart nor visage unmoved, 'Willingly; let him come in
peace and safety.' 'And return so too, my lord?' said the bishop.
'Yes,' rejoined the king, 'if the decision of his peers allow him.'
And when the envoys from England entreated him to grant to the King of
England to go and return in safety, the King of France was wroth, and
answered with his usual oath, 'No, by all the saints of France, unless
the decision tally therewith.' 'My lord king,' rejoined the bishop, 'the
Duke of Normandy cannot come unless there come also the King of England,
since the duke and the king are one and the same person. The baronage of
England would never allow it in any way, and if the king were willing,
he would run, as you know, risk of imprisonment or death.' King Philip