ter castle, falling before him, he passed
his time at Rouen in the profoundest tranquillity, indulging himself in
indolent amusements, and satisfied with vain threatenings and boasts,
which only added greater shame to his inactivity. The English barons who
had attended him in this expedition, disaffected from the beginning, and
now wearied with being so long witnesses to the ignominy of their
sovereign, retired to their own country, and there spread the report of
his unaccountable sloth and cowardice. John quickly followed them; and
returning into his kingdom, polluted with the charge of so heavy a
crime, and disgraced by so many follies, instead of aiming by popular
acts to reestablish his character, he exacted a seventh of their
movables from the barons, on pretence that they had deserted his
service. He laid the same imposition on the clergy, without giving
himself the trouble of seeking for a pretext. He made no proper use of
these great supplies, but saw the great city of Rouen, always faithful
to its sovereigns, and now exerting the most strenuous efforts in his
favor, obliged at length to surrender, without the least attempt to
relieve it Thus the whole Duchy of Normandy, originally acquired by the
valor of his ancestors, and the source from which the greatness of his
family had been derived, after being supported against all shocks for
three hundred years, was torn forever from the stock of Rollo, and
reunited to the crown of France. Immediately all the rest of the
provinces which he held on the continent, except a part of Guienne,
despairing of his protection, and abhorring his government, threw
themselves into the hands of Philip.

Meanwhile the king by his personal vices completed the odium which he
had acquired by the impotent violence of his government. Uxorious and
yet dissolute in his manners, he made no scruple frequently to violate
the wives and daughters of his nobility, that rock on which tyranny has
so often split. Other acts of irregular power, in their greatest
excesses, still retain the characters of sovereign authority; but here
the vices of the prince intrude into the families of the subject, and,
whilst they aggravate the oppression, lower the character of the
oppressor.

In the disposition which all these causes had concurred universally to
diffuse, the slightest motion in his kingdom threatened the most
dangerous consequences. Those things which in quiet times would have
only raised a sligh