" John meanwhile had, on August 11th, suddenly quitted his
passive attitude and laid siege to Alencon; 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 Chateau Gaillard.
Chateau 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.
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