The interests of the French King were in fact no less concerned in Arthur's imprisonment, and more concerned in his death, than were the interests of John himself. John's one remaining chance of holding Philip and the Bretons in check was to keep them in uncertainty whether Arthur were alive or dead, in order to prevent the Bretons from adopting any decided policy, and hamper the French King in his dealings with them and with the Angevin and Poitevin rebels by compelling him to base his alliance with them on conditions avowedly liable to be annulled at any moment by Arthur's reappearance on the political scene. If, therefore, Arthur—as is most probable—was now really dead, whether he had indeed perished a victim of one of those fits of ungovernable fury in which—and in which alone—the Angevin counts sometimes added blunder to crime, or whether he had died a natural death from sickness in prison, or by a fall in attempting to escape,[35] it would be equally politic on John's part to let rumor do its worst rather than suffer any gleam of light to penetrate the mystery which shrouded the captive's fate.
John's chance, however, was a desperate one. A fortnight after Easter, 1203, the French King attacked and took Saumur. Moving southward, he was joined by some Poitevins and Bretons, with whose help he captured sundry castles in Aquitaine. Thence he went back to the Norman border, to be welcomed at Alençon by its count, and to lay seige to Conches. John, who was then at Falaise, sent William the Marshal to Conches, to beg that Philip would "have pity on him and make peace." Philip refused; John hurried back to Rouen, to find both city and castle in flames—whether kindled by accident or by treachery there is nothing to show. Conches was taken; Vaudreuil was betrayed; the few other castles in the county of Evreux which had not already passed, either by cession, conquest, or treason, into Philip's hands shared the like fate, while John flitted restlessly up and down between Rouen and various places in the neighborhood, but made no direct effort to check the progress of the invader. Messenger after messenger came to him with the same story: "The King of France is in your land as an enemy; he is taking your castles; he is binding your seneschals to their horses' tails and dragging them shamefully to prison; he is dealing with your goods at his own pleasure." John heard them all with an unmoved countenance, and dismissed them all with the unvarying reply: "Let him alone! Some day I shall win back all that he is winning from me now."
It was by diplomacy that John hoped to parry the attack which he knew he could not repel by force. Early in the year he had complained to the Pope of the long course of insult and aggression pursued toward him by Philip, and begged Innocent to interfere in his behalf. Thereupon Philip, in his turn, sent messengers and letters to the Pope, giving his own version of his relations with John, and endeavoring to justify his own conduct. On May 26th, Innocent announced to both kings that he was about to despatch the abbots of Casamario, Trois Fontaines, and Dun as commissioners to arbitrate upon the matters in dispute between them.
These envoys seem to have been delayed on their journey; and when they reached France they, for some time, found it impossible to ascertain whether Philip would or would not accept their arbitration. When at last he met them in council at Mantes on August 26th, he told them bluntly that he "was not bound to take his orders from the apostolic see as to his rights over a fief and a vassal of his own, and that the matter in dispute between the two kings was no business of the Pope's." John meanwhile had, on August 11th, suddenly quitted his passive attitude and laid siege to Alençon; but he retired on Philip's approach four days later. An attempt which he made to regain Brezolles was equally ineffectual. Philip, on the other hand, was now resolved to bring the war to a crisis. It was probably straight from the council at Mantes that he marched to the siege of Château Gaillard.
Château Gaillard was a fortress of far other importance than any of the castles which both parties had been so lightly winning, losing, and winning again, during the last ten years. It was the key of the Seine above Rouen, the bulwark raised by Richard Coeur de Lion to protect his favorite city against attack from France. Not till the fortifications which commanded the river at Les Andelys were either destroyed or in his own hands could Philip hope to win the Norman capital. And those fortifications were of no common order. Their builder was the greatest, as he was the last, of the "great builders" of Anjou; and his "fair castle on the Rock of Andelys" was at once the supreme outcome of their architectural genius, and the earliest and most perfect example in Europe of the new development which the crusaders' study of the mighty works of Byzantine or even earlier conquerors, quickened and illuminated as it was by the exigencies of their own struggle with the infidels, had given to the science of military architecture in the East. During the past year John had added to his brother's castle a chapel with an undercroft, placed at the southeastern corner of the second ward. The fortress, which nature and art had combined to make impregnable, was well stocked with supplies of every kind; moreover, it was one of the few places in Normandy which Philip had no hope of winning, and John no fear of losing, through treason on the part of its commandant. Roger de Lacy, to whom John had given it in charge, was an English baron who had no stake in Normandy, and whose personal interest was therefore bound up with that of the English King; he was also a man of high character and dauntless courage. Nothing short of a siege of the most determined kind would avail against the "Saucy Castle"; and on that siege Philip now concentrated all his forces and all his skill.
As the right bank of the Seine at that point was entirely commanded by the castle and its neighbor fortification, the walled town—also built by Richard—known as the New or Lesser Andely, while the river itself was doubly barred by a stockade across its bed, close under the foot of the rock, and by a strong tower on an island in midstream just below the town, he was obliged to encamp in the meadows on the opposite shore. The stockade, however, was soon broken down by the daring of a few young Frenchmen; and the waterway being thus cleared for the transport of materials, he was enabled to construct below the island a pontoon, by means of which he could throw a portion of his troops across the river to form the siege of the New Andely, place the island garrison between two fires, and at once keep open his own communications and cut off those of the besieged with both sides of the river alike.
These things seem to have been done toward the end of August. On the 27th and 28th of that month John was at Montfort, a castle some five-and-twenty miles from Rouen, held by one of his few faithful barons, Hugh of Gournay. On the 30th, if not the 29th, he and all his available forces were back at Rouen, ready to attempt on that very night the relief of Les Andelys. The King's plan was a masterpiece of ingenuity; and the fact that the elaborate preparations needed for its execution were made so rapidly and so secretly as to escape detection by an enemy so close at hand goes far to show how mistaken are the charges of sloth and incapacity which, even in his own day, men brought against "John Softsword."[36]
He had arranged that a force of three hundred knights, three thousand mounted men-at-arms, and four thousand foot, under the command of William the Marshal, with a band of mercenaries under Lou Pescaire, should march by night from Rouen along the left bank of the Seine, and fall, under cover of darkness, upon the portion of the French army which still lay on that side of the river. Meanwhile, seventy transport vessels, which had been built by Richard to serve either for sea or river traffic, and as many more boats as could be collected, were to be laden with provisions for the distressed garrison of the island fort, and convoyed up the stream by a flotilla of small warships, manned by "pirates" under a chief named Alan and carrying, besides their own daring and reckless crews, a force of three thousand Flemings. Two hundred strokes of the oar, John reckoned, would bring these ships to the French pontoon; they must break it if they could; if not, they could at least coöperate with the Marshal and Lou Pescaire in cutting off the northern division of the French host from its comrades and supplies on the left bank, and throw into the island fort provisions which would enable it to hold out till John himself should come to its rescue.
One error brought the scheme to ruin, an error neither of strategy nor of conduct, but of scientific knowledge. John had miscalculated the time at which, on that night, the Seine would be navigable upstream, and his counsellors evidently shared his mistake till it was brought home to them by experience. The land forces achieved their march without hinderance, and at the appointed hour, shortly before daybreak, fell upon the French camp with such a sudden and furious onslaught that the whole of its occupants fled across the pontoon, which broke under their weight. But the fleet, which had been intended to arrive at the same time, was unable to make way against the tide, and before it could reach its destination the French had rallied on the northern bank, repaired the pontoon, recrossed it in full force, and routed John's troops. The ships, when they at last came up, thus found themselves unsupported in their turn, and though they made a gallant fight they were beaten back with heavy loss. In the flush of victory one young Frenchman contrived to set fire to the island fort; it surrendered, and the whole population of the New Andely fled in a panic to Château Gaillard, leaving their town to be occupied by Philip.
The Saucy Castle itself still remained to be won. Knowing, however, that for this nothing was likely to avail but a blockade, which was now practically formed on two sides by his occupation of the island fort and the Lesser Andely, Philip on the very next day set off to make another attempt on Radepont, whence he had been driven away by John a year before. This time John made no effort to dislodge him. It was not worth while; the one thing that mattered now was Château Gaillard. Thither Philip, after receiving the surrender of Radepont, returned toward the end of September, 1203, to complete the blockade.