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Notes for John Lackland Plantagenet, King Of England:
According to Hillaire Belloc in "History of England": King of England April 6th 1199--October 19th, 1216. "At the moment of Richard's death, John...was in thirty-second year. He inherited an imperilled estate: the too widespread Angevin dominion, with Brittany connected, with Normandy, Maine, Anjou, all Aquitaine...Long before his death the whole scheme had disappeared, and the French kings of England were left masters of their kingdom alone with no more than a distant southern remnant of their continental possessions to recall their origins...He was exceedingly energetic, he was a very good soldier, he had statesmanship; he was capable of continuous hard work--though only by spells...He suffered, like his father, from a violent and spasmodic temper, but, unlike his father, he never knew how to restrain it. He had the same sensuality, but he let it run riot to the detriment of all that his intelligence and political will had planned. He was more permanently and regularly cruel than any of his race...a fine faculty for quarrelling...Such a man, pitted against the by no means sympathetic but tenacious and closely calculating character of Philip Augustus [King of France], was bound to lose, even if he had not ingerited a breaking patrimony: and he did lose...crowned at Rouen on 25th April, 1199, and had then come over to England and had himself crowned at Westminster on the 27th May...But Brittany, Anjou, and Maine were opposed [prefering Arthur, John's younger nephew)...John successfully quarrelled with the lords of Aquitaine. He desired and obtained as wife (having got rid of his first one) the very young daughter of the Count of Angouleme. She was already pledged to the heir of Marche, one of the gfreat Auitainian nobility (a Lusignan). It was purely personal whim with no statecraft behind it at all, and it raised the South. The lords of Aquitaine appealed to Philip Augustus, the overlord of John and of them all. Poitou in particular rose...March 6th, 1204, Chateau Baillard surrendered and the date may well be set down as a turning-point in the history of Western Europe. After that all Normandy slipped away...All that was securely left to the Plantagenets beyond the Channel was the distant but productive land of Gascony...May 15th, 1213, the king, acting on the advice of his barons...proposed to make himself the feudal vassal of the Holy See...to use it as a shield against the ambition of the French king, who was already aiming at becoming feudal superior of England as he already was of Normandy, Main, and Anjou...the Battle of Bouvines. In order to recover the French fiefs of his house he had formed a coalition against the King of France, and while he was attacking from the west, the Emporer with a vast army, mainly German but also Flemish, and with a contingent of English and Anlo-Normans under Salisbury, was to march on Paris from the east. The great French feudatories of the north-east, notably the lord of Flanders, were in rebellion aginst Philip, and joined the alliance. If the Emperor should win his battle, John would recover all that he had lost...July 27th, 1214...the French victory was complete, and it was this that ruined John's cause. Indeed, the action of Bouvines is one of the very important decisive battles of history...playing for time, signs the barons' demands (later incorporated as "Magna Carta") June 15th, 1215...a solemn guaranty of feudal custom...Its immediate and specific object was the guaranty of the great feudal incomes against the necessities of the king, and at the same time a guaranteeing of the great clerical incomes...within ten days the whole position had become again quite unsound...John was prepared for a stuggle in arms...the Pope had annulled the Charter as obtained by violence...the barons counter-recountered by inviting a foreign invasion, and promising the Crown of England To Prince Louis, heir to Philip Augustus...at the end of February [1216], a body of French knights had come up the Thames, and on May 16th Louis sailed from Calais with nearly 700 ships...Louis rallied a considerable force, took Rochester, reached London on June 2nd, was given homage...the idea that Louis was a "foreigner" in our modern sense of the word is nonsense. All the governing part of England, all barons and higher clergy who had called in Louis, were of exactly the same sort as he was, and as John was, in every social detail of speech, manner, dress, ideas--everything...John was thus pushed up against the Welsh hills--but he still had Dover, the main port of entry, and he still held the line of the Thames...His garrison at Windsor was besieged, but held out. The line of the Thames stood firm, and Dover held out...then an illness began, due, some said, to poison, others, to excess. He passed the Wash at the Welland...pushed on to Newark dying, and died there on the 19th of October. [1216]"
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