The Count of La Marche began the contest. He had powerful allies, but the chief of them, his stepson, Henry III. of England, and his neighbour, Raimond III. Count of Toulouse, were tardy in their movements. Provoked by the devastations committed on his lands, Louis suddenly took the field. He had made great preparations, had provided large stores of provisions, means of transport and encampment, and machinery for carrying on a siege. Four thousand knights and twenty thousand men-at-arms followed him. The provincial militia joined: in short, as it neared the enemy's country, the King's army swelled apace, says the old chronicler, 'like rivers when they approach the sea.' Many fortresses in La Saintonge and L'Angoumois were carried by assault. Furious and desperate with her ill success, the Countess Isabelle of La Marche tried another form of warfare: she gave two of her serfs a poison which they undertook to mix either with the food or wine of the King and his brothers. But when they reached the royal camp, the two poor wretches were discovered, taken, and hanged. At length the King of England landed at Royan, at the mouth of the Gironde. His Parliament, disliking this war, had refused him any assistance in it; but he brought with him seven of his principal vassals, three hundred knights, and, above all, the treasure which he had succeeded in amassing: 'thirty hogsheads full of esterlings,' says Matthew Paris, 'enough to pay a whole army of Poitevins and Gascons.' {32} A truce had subsisted for some time between France and England. Henry sent messengers to Louis, informing him that this truce was now broken, since he considered it his duty to defend his step-father, the Count of La Marche, by force of arms. Louis replied, that on his part he had scrupulously respected the truce, and had no thought of breaking it; but that he considered himself quite at liberty to punish a rebellious vassal. So the war began with ardour on both sides; and this young king, docile son of so capable a mother, soon showed himself to be an unsuspected hero. Near two towns in Saintonge, Taillebourg and Saintes, on a bridge which commanded the approach to the one and before the walls of the other, Louis fought two battles, where his brilliant personal valour and the enthusiastic devotion of his troops decided the victory and caused the surrender of both places.