in 1202 the war was renewed. At an interview at Le Goulet on March 25, Philip demanded the cession of Anjou, Poitou and Normandy to his ward, Arthur. John refused; he was summoned to Paris before the royal judges, and failing to appear was sentenced at the end of April 1202 to lose all his fiefs. Brittany, Aquitaine and Anjou were conferred on Arthur. Philip invaded Normandy, took Lyons-la-Fork and Eu, and, establishing himself in Gournay, besieged Argues. But John, joined by William des Roches and other lords of Maine and Poitou, jealous at the increase of Philip's power, defeated and took Arthur prisoner at Mirebeau. Philip abandoned the siege of Arques in a fit of fury, marched to the Loire, burning everywhere, and then returned to Paris. But John soon alienated the Poitevin barons, and William des Roches signed a treaty with Philip on March 22, 1203. Then Philip continued his great task, the conquest of Normandy, capturing the towns around the fortress of Chateau-Gaillard which Richard had built to command the valley of the Seine. Pope Innocent III. tried to bring about peace, but Philip was obdurate, and after murdering Arthur of Brittany John took refuge in England in December 1203. The fall of Chateau-Gaillard, after a siege which lasted from September 1203 to April 1204, decided the fate of Normandy. Rouen, bound by ties of trade to England, resisted for forty days ; but it surrendered on June 24, 1204. The conquest of Maine, Tou raine, Anjou and Poitou in 1204 and 1205 was little more than a military promenade, though the castles of Loches and Chinon held out for a year. Philip secured his conquest by lavishing privileges on the convents and towns. He left the great lords, such as William des Roches, in full possession of their feudal power. In 1206 he marched through Brittany and divided it amongst his adherents. A truce for two years was made on Oct. 26, 1206, by which John renounced all claims in Normandy, Maine, Brittany, Touraine and Anjou, but it did not last six months. Then Poitou was thoroughly subdued, and another truce was made in 1208, little more than southern Saintonge and Gas cony being left in the hands of John. Philip had reduced to a mere remnant the formidable continental empire of the Angevins, which had threatened the existence of the Capetian monarchy.
Philip then undertook to invade England. He had collected 1,50o vessels and summoned all his barons when Innocent III., having sufficiently frightened John, sent Pandulf with the terms of submission, which John accepted on the 13th of May.
Disappointed of his hopes of England, Philip turned his arms against Ferdinand, count of Flanders. He invaded Flanders and took the chief towns within a week; but he had part of his fleet burned by the English at Damme, and had to burn the rest to save it from falling into their hands. He returned to Paris, and Ferdinand retook most of the towns which had been taken by the king. A war of fire and pillage began, in which Philip and his son Louis burned their way through Flanders, and Ferdinand did the same through Artois.
1214 came the great crisis of Philip's life. A league including his rebel vassals, Renaud of Dammartin, count of Boulogne, and Ferdinand, count of Flanders, with the emperor Otto IV. and a number of German princes of the Rhine region, had been formed in the north-east, while John of England made one more attempt to recover his heritage at the head of an army of mercenaries, aided by the fickle baronage of Poitou. John landed at La Rochelle on Feb. io, 1214, and was at first successful. On June 19 he laid siege to La Roche-aux Moines, the fortress which defended Angers and commanded the Loire valley; but on the approach of a royal army under Prince Louis on July 2 his Poitevin barons refused to risk a pitched battle, and he fled hastily to La Rochelle. The Angevin Empire
in France was lost. Meanwhile Philip himself won his greatest victory at the bridge of Bouvines, among the morasses of Flan ders. At first taken by surprise, he turned the abortive attack into a complete rout. Renaud and Ferdinand were taken prisoner, and Otto IV. fled from the battlefield. The army of the allies was utterly destroyed (July 27, 1214). The battle of Bouvines, a decisive battle for the history of Germany as well as for France and England, sealed the work of Philip Augustus. The expedition of his son Louis to conquer England can hardly be considered as an incident of his reign, though he was careful to safeguard the rights of the French Crown. More important was the Albigensian crusade, in which he allowed Louis to take part, though he him self, preoccupied with the king of England, had refused time after time to do anything. He treated Simon de Montfort as if he were a royal bailli; but it was not in virtue of any deep-laid scheme of his that in the end Amaury de Montfort, Simon's son, resigned himself to leave his lands to the Crown of France, and gave the Crown a power it had never before possessed in Languedoc.
II. surrounded himself with clerks and legists of more or less humble origin, who gave him counsel and acted as his agents. His baillis, who at first rather resembled the itinerant justices of Henry II. of England, were sent into the royal domain to supervise the conduct of the prevots and hear complaints, while in the south local feudal magnates were given similar powers with the title of senecha Feudal service was more and more compounded for by a money pay ment, and additional taxes were raised. The extension of the system of sauvegarde, by which abbeys, towns or lay vassals put themselves under the special protection of the king, and that of pariage, by which the possessor surrendered half the interest in his estate to the king in return for protection or some further grant, increased the royal power. The small barons were com pletely reduced to submission, whilst the greater feudatories could often appoint a castellan to their own castles only after he had taken an oath to the king.
It has been said with some justice that Philip II. was the first king of France to take the bourgeoisie into partnership. He favoured the great merchants, granting them trade privileges and monopolies. The Jews he protected and plundered by turns, after the fashion of mediaeval kings. Amongst the subject towns ad ministered by prevots a great extension of the "custom of Lorris" took place during his reign. Philip was the ally and protector of the communes. Before him they were resisted and often crushed; after him they were exploited, oppressed, and finally destroyed. In the case of Senlis he extended the jurisdiction of the commune to all crimes committed in the district. It is true that he sup pressed some communes in the newly conquered fiefs, such as Normandy, where John had been prodigal of privileges, but he erected new communes in his own private domain, quite contrary to the custom of other kings. He seems to have regarded them as a kind of garrison against feudal unruliness, while the rents they furnished increased his financial resources. He created no new types of commune, however, except Peronne, which received a maximum of political independence, the twenty-four electors, who named the :lures and other officers, being elected by the corps de metiers.