Philip repelled none. Those on whose services he could best rely, and whose aid was likely to be most useful, he met with courtesy and frankness, remitted the fines he had exacted, restored the feofs he had forfeited, and, by the voluntary reparation of the oppression he had committed, won far more upon opinion, than he had lost by the oppression itself. Those, however, who still murmured, or held back, he struck unsparingly. He destroyed their strong holds, he forfeited their feofs, and thus, joining policy and vengeance, he increased his own power, he punished the rebellious, he scared his enemies, and he added many a fair territory to his own domain.
The eyes of the pope were still upon France; and seeing that the power for which he had made such an effort was falling even by the height to which he had raised it; that the barons were beginning to sympathise and co-operate with the king; and that those who still remained in opposition to the monarch were left now exposed to the full effects of his anger; Innocent resolved at once to make new efforts, both by private intrigue, and by another daring exercise of his power, to establish firmly what he had already gained.
Amidst those who still remained discontented in France, he spared no means to maintain that discontent; and amidst Philip's external enemies he spread the project of that tremendous league, which afterwards, gathering force like an avalanche, rolled on with overwhelming power, in spite of all the efforts which Innocent at last thought fit to oppose to it, when he found that the mighty engine which he had first put in motion threatened to destroy himself. At the same time, to give these schemes time to acquire maturity and strength, and to break the bond of union which war always creates between a brave nation and a warlike monarch, he prepared to interpose between John of England and Philip Augustus, and to command the latter, with new threats of excommunication in case of disobedience, to abandon the glorious course that he was pursuing in person on the right of the Loire, at the moment when we have seen him despatch Arthur to carry on the war on the left.
It was somewhere about the period of the events we have related in our last chapter, and winter had compelled Philip to close the campaign which he had been pursuing against John with his wonted activity, when, one morning, as he sat framing his plans of warfare for the ensuing year, a conversation to the following effect took place between him and Guerin.
"--And then for Rouen!" said the king. "Thus cut off from all supplies, as I have showed you, and beleaguered by such an army as I can bring against it, it cannot hold out a month. But we must be sudden, Guerin, in our movements, carefully avoiding any demonstration of our intentions, till we sit down before the place, lest John should remove our poor Arthur, and thus foil us in the chief point of our enterprise. Three more such bright sunshining mornings as this, and I will call my men to the monstre. God send us an early spring!"
"I fear me much, sire, that the pope will interfere," replied Guerin; "repeated couriers are passing between Rome and England. He has already remonstrated strongly against the war; and, I little doubt, will endeavour, by all means, to put a stop to it."
"Ha, say'st thou?" said the king, looking up with a smile, from a rude plan of the city of Rouen, round which he was drawing the lines of an encampment. "God send he may interfere, Guerin! He has triumphed over me once, good friend. It is time that I should triumph over him."
"But are you sure of being able to do so, sire?" demanded Guerin, with his usual simple frankness, putting the naked truth before the king's eyes, without one qualifying phrase! "The pleasure of resistance would, methinks, be too dear bought, at the expense of a second defeat. The pope is strengthening himself by alliances. But yesterday the Duke of Burgundy informed me, that six successive messengers from the holy see had passed through his territories within a month, all either bound to Otho the emperor, or to Ferrand count of Flanders."
Philip listened with somewhat of an abstracted air. His eye fixed upon vacancy, as if he were gazing on the future; and yet it was evident that he listened still, for a smile of triumphant consciousness in his own powers glanced from time to time across his lip, as the minister touched upon the machinations of his enemies.
"I fear me, sire," continued Guerin, "that your bold resistance to the will of the pontiff has created you at Rome an enemy that it will not be easy to appease."