Within a year, however, Pope and Emperor had quarrelled, and Otto was excommunicated.[745] This was, of course, an additional bond of union between him and John. At the same time, a kinsman of both princes was setting the Pope and the French king alike at defiance. Count Raymond of Toulouse, the husband of John’s sister Joan, had from the outset favoured the heretics who for the last two years had kept southern Gaul in turmoil; in 1211 he openly allowed them to concentrate in his capital city, and headed their resistance to the forces which Innocent and Philip had sent against them under Simon de Montfort. Toulouse was besieged, but John and Otto kept their kinsman so well supplied with the means of defence and sustenance that the “crusaders” at last grew hopeless of taking it and raised the siege. Otto had answered the Pope’s excommunication by conquering Tuscia, Apulia and Calabria; whereupon Innocent published another sentence, deposing him from his imperial office and his German kingdom, and bidding the princes of the empire elect a new sovereign in his stead. [Sidenote: 1211–1212] John, “with such a comrade,” grew bolder than ever.[746] The common interest of the three excommunicate kinsmen obviously lay in crushing France, the ally of the Pope; and the moment seemed at hand for the fulfilment of John’s highest hopes. John and Raymond in the south, John and Otto in the north and east, might hem in Philip Augustus completely, if the princes of the border-land of France and Germany--Boulogne, Flanders, the Netherlands, Lorraine--could be so won over as to insure their co-operation in the plans of the uncle and nephew for the conquest and dismemberment of the French kingdom. To this end John’s utmost powers of diplomacy had been devoted for many years past; and in the case of most of these princes the end was now gained. In the autumn of 1211 Reginald of Boulogne, whose policy had long been wavering, quarrelled openly with Philip and took refuge with his kinsman the count of Bar;[747] in May 1212 he was in England, pledging his homage and his service to John. By the middle of August the counts of Bar, Limburg, Flanders and Louvain were all pledged to John’s side.[748] John himself was meanwhile preparing for an expedition to Gascony; on June 15 thirty-nine English towns were ordered to furnish contingents of men “ready to cross the sea with the king in his service when he should require them.”[749] [Sidenote: 1212]