By the end of February 1204[2114] Philip grew impatient of the blockade of Château-Gaillard, and probably also uneasy lest John should return from England with an overwhelming force for its relief. He therefore resolved to try whether it could not, after all, be taken by assault. He himself took up his station at the central point of the entrenchment, on the crest of the hill, facing the narrow neck of land by which it was joined to the castle-rock. This isthmus, the only direct approach to the castle itself, he caused to be levelled and widened till he could erect upon it a wooden gallery or covered way leading from his own lines up to the edge of the outermost ditch of the fortress. When, with considerable difficulty and loss of life, this was accomplished, he caused a beffroy or wooden tower on wheels to be carried through the gallery, set up when it reached the further end, and moved along the edge of the fosse, the cross-bowmen with whom it was filled doing deadly execution upon the soldiers on the ramparts, who however made a gallant defence. Meanwhile, the French were bringing through their covered way earth, wood, stones, turf, everything they could find to fill up the ditch. Before it was half full they lost patience and adopted a quicker method of approach. They dropped down the perpendicular counterscarp by means of their scaling-ladders, and set these up again on the sloping inner side of the ditch, under the foot of the great round tower which formed the head of the first ward. The ladders were too short for the ascent; but despite a heavy fire of stones and arrows from the tower, the storming-party scrambled up, crawling on hands and knees, or using their swords and daggers by way of Alpine-staves, till the base of the wall was reached. Then, while a shower of missiles rattled down upon the shields held over them by their comrades, the sappers dug and hewed at the foundations till the tower was undermined; the fuse was inserted and fired, and the miners had just had time to withdraw when a large portion of the wall fell crashing into the ditch. The French rushed to the breach; Roger de Lacy, seeing that the first ward was lost, ordered the wooden buildings within it to be fired; he and his men withdrew across the drawbridge into the second ward, and when the fire died down, they saw the ruined fragment of the tower crowned by the banner of Cadoc.[2115]

The French were one step nearer to the goal; but the next step looked as impracticable as ever. Between them and the besieged there yawned another ditch as wide and deep, there rose another rampart as mighty and as inaccessible as the first. In vain they prowled about the edge of the fosse seeking for a point at which they could venture upon an attack, till a young squire or man-at-arms, by name Peter, but more commonly known in the camp as “Bogis” or “Snub-nose,” caught sight of a little window just above the wall at the south-eastern corner of the rampart.[2116] This window was the sole external opening in John’s new building, which was otherwise accessible only on the inner side, by two doors, one leading into the storehouse which formed the lower story, one into the chapel above it, and both opening towards the courtyard. Bogis at once communicated his discovery to a few trusty comrades; they reconnoitred the ditch till they found a somewhat shallower place on its southern side, where it was possible to scramble down; thence they crawled along the bottom till they were directly under the window, and then clambered up the sloping side to the foot of the wall. By standing on the shoulders of a comrade Bogis managed to reach the window; he found it unbarred, unguarded, and wide enough for his body to pass through; he sprang in, let down to his companions a rope which he had brought for the purpose, and drew them up one by one till they were all safe inside the building, which proved to be the storehouse under the chapel.[2117] Finding the door locked, they began to hammer at it with the hilts of their daggers. This noise and the shouts with which they accompanied it soon alarmed the garrison. They, thinking that the French had entered the new building and occupied it in force, hastily set it on fire; unhappily, the wind caught the flames and spread them in a few minutes over the whole enclosure. The garrison fled to their sole remaining refuge, the citadel; Bogis and his companions escaped out of the blazing ruins into the casemates; the bulk of the French host, anxiously watching the scene from the opposite side of the ditch, thought they had all perished; but when the flames died down and the smoke began to clear away, Bogis himself appeared at the gate and let down the drawbridge for the army to pass over in triumph.[2118]

Philip’s engines and their own too hastily-kindled fires had made havoc among the besieged garrison; they were now reduced to a hundred and eighty fighting-men.[2119] Even this small number, however, might have sufficed to hold for an indefinite time the remains of Richard’s matchless fortress, but for one strange error on the part of the royal architect. Richard had indeed taken the precaution of making the sole gate of his citadel open not directly towards the courtyard of the second ward, but at a much less accessible point to the north-eastward, where only a narrow strip of ground intervened between the counterscarp of the ditch and the outer rampart. Most unaccountably, however, instead of furnishing this gate with a drawbridge, he left a portion of the rock itself to serve as a natural passage over the ditch hollowed out beneath it. Across this immovable bridge a machine known by the name of “cat”—a sort of tent upon wheels, moved by the men inside it—was, as the epic bard of the siege expresses it, “made to crawl” close up to the gate, which the sappers, hidden under this shelter, at once began to undermine. Roger de Lacy, alarmed no doubt by the fate of the first tower which had been thus dealt with, tried the effect of a countermine, which was so far successful that the French were for a moment compelled to retire; but the “cat” was speedily replaced by a mighty engine discharging heavy stones with immense force. At the third discharge, the wall, undermined as it was from both sides, suddenly fell in. The French troops poured through the breach; Roger and his little band were quickly surrounded, and it was no fault of theirs that they were not slaughtered to a man, for every one of them refused to yield, and was only disarmed by main force. The hundred and twenty men-at-arms and thirty-six knights who still remained were, however, made prisoners without further bloodshed; and thus, on March 6, 1204, Philip became master of Château-Gaillard.[2120]

On that March day the king of England really lost not only his Saucy Castle, but his whole continental dominions north of Loire. Thenceforth all resistance in Normandy was at an end; and in three months the whole duchy laid itself without a struggle at the victor’s feet. Soon after John’s departure over sea Philip had opened negotiations with the citizens of the chief Norman towns, representing to them that the king of England had deserted them, that he himself was their rightful overlord and sovereign, and bidding them either receive him as such, or prepare to be all hanged or flayed alive when he should have overcome their resistance by force. After some discussion they made a truce with him for a year, promising that if no succour came from England within that time, they would submit to him without reserve.[2121] On the fall of Château-Gaillard they all, together with the constables of the remaining fortresses throughout John’s trans-marine dominions, sent messages to John setting forth the difficulties of their position and remonstrating earnestly with him on his tardiness in coming to their aid. He bade them look for nothing from him, but do each of them whatsoever they might think good.[2122] A few weeks later he despatched the bishops of Norwich and Ely with the earls of Pembroke and Leicester to see if there was any possibility of coming to terms with the king of France.[2123] But it was too late. Philip sarcastically retorted that the first preliminary to peace must be the restoration of Arthur;[2124] and on the Sunday after Easter he marched again into Normandy. Falaise surrendered after a week’s siege;[2125] Domfront, Séez, Lisieux, Caen, Bayeux, Barfleur, Cherbourg, Coutances,[2126] opened their gates at his mere approach. Meanwhile Guy of Thouars, who had been governing Britanny since Arthur’s death,[2127] with four hundred knights and an immense host of Bretons attacked and burned the Mont-St.-Michel, sacked Avranches, and marched ravaging and burning through the Bessin to join the king at Caen. Philip sent them back again, together with the count of Boulogne, William des Barres, a large body of French knights, and a troop of John’s mercenaries who had changed sides after the surrender of Falaise, to finish the subjugation of Mortain and the Avranchin,[2128] while he himself returned to complete his conquest of eastern Normandy. Only three important places were still unsubdued there: Arques on the northern coast, Verneuil on the southern border, and Rouen itself. The three bodies of soldiers and townsfolk came to a mutual understanding whereby those of the capital, on the Tuesday in Rogation-week—June 1—made a truce with Philip for thirty days, stipulating that their brethren at Arques and Verneuil should receive the same benefit if they applied for it within a certain time, and promising in the name of all alike that if no succour came from John within the specified interval, they would give themselves up unreservedly to the king of France.[2129] None of them, however, waited for the expiration of the truce. On midsummer-day Rouen opened its gates;[2130] Arques and Verneuil followed its example,[2131] and Normandy was won.

Cadoc and his mercenaries had established their head-quarters at Angers;[2132] the whole of Anjou and Touraine, except the strongholds of Chinon and Loches, was already secured; Aquitaine alone still remained to be conquered. This, indeed, was likely to prove a more difficult task; for however bitterly the men of the south might hate their Norman or Angevin rulers, their chances of regaining or preserving their independence under a sovereign who must henceforth be parted from them by the whole width of the Bay of Biscay would be obviously so much better than under one whose direct sway now stretched all along the northern bank of the Loire from its mouth almost to its source, that they were certain to veer round at once to the side of John, simply for the purpose of keeping Philip out. Such was in fact the result throughout the whole country south of the Dordogne; Savaric of Mauléon, lately John’s enemy and prisoner, at once became his most energetic and devoted champion;[2133] while Angoulême was secured for John as the heritage of his queen Isabel. But the link which had bound Guyenne to the Angevin house was broken at last; Queen Eleanor had died on April 1.[2134] There was no longer any legal obstacle to the execution of the sentence of forfeiture passed two years ago; and on S. Laurence’s day Philip assembled his host for the conquest of Poitou.[2135] Robert of Turnham, John’s seneschal,[2136] did what he could in its defence, but he was powerless against the indifference of the people and the active hostility of William des Roches and the Lusignans.[2137] Poitiers was soon taken; and in a few weeks all Poitou, except La Rochelle, Niort and Thouars, submitted to Philip as its liege lord.[2138] At the approach of winter Philip returned to his own dominions, leaving a body of troops to blockade Chinon, which was held for John by Hubert de Burgh, and another to form the siege of Loches, no less bravely defended by Gerald of Atie.[2139] At Easter 1205 the king marched with a fresh host upon Loches and took it by assault.[2140] On midsummer-eve Chinon fell in like manner.[2141] Robert of Turnham had already been made prisoner by the French;[2142] the viscount of Thouars now made his submission to Philip, and received from him the seneschalship of Poitou in Robert’s stead;[2143] Niort and La Rochelle were left alone in their resistance to the French king.