answered him, 'How now, my lord bishop? It is well known that my
liegeman, the Duke of Normandy, by violence got possession of England.
And so, prithee, if a vassal increase in honor and power, shall his lord
suzerain lose his rights? Never!'

"King John was not willing to trust to chance and the decision of the
French, who liked him not; and he feared above everything to be
reproached with the shameful murder of Arthur. The grandees of France,
nevertheless, proceeded to a decision, which they could not do lawfully,
since he whom they had to try was absent, and would have gone had he been
able."

The condemnation, not a whit the less, took full effect; and Philip
Augustus thus recovered possession of nearly all the territories which
his father, Louis VII., had kept but for a moment. He added, in
succession, other provinces to his dominions; in such wise that the
kingdom of France, which was limited, as we have seen, under Louis the
Fat, to the Ile-de-France and certain portions of Picardy and Orleanness,
comprised besides, at the end of the reign of Philip Augustus,
Vermandois, Artois, the two Vexins, French and Norman, Berri, Normandy,
Maine, Anjou, Poitou, Touraine, and Auvergne.

In 1206 the territorial work of Philip Augustus was well nigh completed;
but his wars were not over. John Lackland, when worsted, kicked against
the pricks, and was incessantly hankering, in his antagonism to the King
of France, after hostile alliances and local conspiracies easy to hatch
amongst certain feudal lords discontented with their suzerain. John was
on intimate terms with his nephew, Otho IV., Emperor of Germany and the
foe of Philip Augustus, who had supported against him Frederick II., his
rival for the empire. They prepared in concert for a grand attack upon