WARS IN FRANCE. [IX. 25° arose not on account of the mere wish of France to revindicate her alienated provinces, but on account of the disputed right to a feudal superiority, or the possession of a debateable frontier, or the division between two co-heiresses, or the existence of a custom of representation. When, as under Philip Augustus, the design of aggression was strong enough to take a more decided line, still it was on no false pretext that war was waged, and on no merely imaginary process that forfeiture was decreed; the barons of Poictou legally impleaded John for his treatment of the Count of la Marche, the barons of Brittany legally arraigned him for the destruction of Arthur : as his feudal lord, Philip summoned him, and John, as a contumacious vassal, suffered judgment by default. In the execution of the sentence Philip had on his side, not only the popular hatred of his competitor, but the conscious recognition that legally John had lost his cause. Normandy and Anjou were practically undefended ; Philip's victories were justified by the recognition of the countries which renounced their old rulers for sound and lawful reasons. There were no nonjuring bishops in Normandy and Anjou. It would not be difficult to show how the legal aspect of the Poictevin succession affected the different fate of Guienne and Gascony; but I pass on, for I have mentioned that already in reference to Henry III and S. Lewis; I may just add that when Lewis, in 1259, obtained from his brother-in-law a final surrender of Normandy and homage and fealty for Guienne, Henry formally acknowledged the justice of the sentence under which his father had forfeited the former, and Lewis practically acknowledged the justice of the claim by which Henry retained his hold upon the latter. A piece of legal formalism this, we say; yet it was so powerful a piece of formalism that it unquestionably made the breach between Simon de Montfort and the royal party an irreparable