For the moment, however, he was in luck.  In Aquitaine he seemed in a fair way to carry all before him without striking a blow.  Angouleme had passed into his hands by the death of his father-in-law on June 17th.  Guy of Limoges had risen in revolt again, but at the end of August or early in September he was captured.  The Lusignans, from their prison at Caen, made overtures for peace, and by dint of protestations and promises succeeded ere long in regaining their liberty, of course on the usual conditions of surrendering their castles and giving hostages for their loyalty.  It was almost equally a matter of course that as soon as they were free they began intriguing against John.  But the chronic intrigues of the south were in reality—­as John himself seems to have discovered—­a far less serious danger than the disaffection in his northern dominions.  This last evil was undoubtedly, so far as Normandy was concerned, owing in great measure to John’s own fault.  He had intrusted the defence of the Norman duchy to his mercenaries under the command of a Provencal captain—­whose real name is unknown—­who seems to have adopted for himself the nickname of Lou Pescaire ("the Fisherman")—­which the Normans apparently corrupted into “Louvrekaire”—­and who habitually treated his employer’s peaceable subjects in a fashion in which other commanders would have shrunk from treating avowed enemies.  Side by side with the discontent thus caused among the people there was a rapid growth of treason among the Norman barons—­treason fraught with far greater peril than the treason of the nobles of Aquitaine, because it was more persistent and more definite in its aim; because it was at once less visible and tangible and more deeply rooted; because it spread in silence and wrought in darkness; and because, while no southern rebel ever really fought for anything but his own hand, the northern traitors were in close concert with Philip Augustus.  John knew not whom to trust; he could, in fact, trust no one; and herein lay the explanation of his restless movements, his unaccountable wanderings, his habit of journeying through byways, his constant changes of plan.  Moreover, besides the Aquitanian rebels, the Norman traitors, and the French enemy, there were the Breton partisans of Arthur to be reckoned with.  These had now found a leader in William des Roches, who, when he saw that he could not prevail upon John to set Arthur at liberty, openly withdrew from the King’s service and organized a league of the Breton nobles against him.

These Bretons, reinforced by some barons from Anjou and Maine, succeeded, on October 29, 1202, in gaining possession of Angers.  It may have been to watch for an opportunity of dislodging them that John, who was then at Le Mans, went to spend a fortnight at Saumur and another at Chinon.  Early in December, however, he fell back upon Normandy, and while the intruders were harrying his ancestral counties with fire and sword, he kept Christmas with his Queen at Caen, “faring