No pacification between the kings was arrived at, and at Whitsuntide both openly prepared for war. This was the first real war in which John took part; for his attacks upon Aquitaine in 1184 had been mere raids, probably directed by Geoffrey, and it was not under his personal leadership that his mercenaries had fought their losing fight with the Irish in Munster. Now he was appointed to command one of the four bodies into which King Henry divided his host; the other three being entrusted to Richard, Earl William de Mandeville, and Geoffrey the chancellor.[98] The position of these different bodies of troops at the opening of the campaign is obscure. One English authority states that when Philip began the war by laying siege to Châteauroux, Richard and John were both within its walls.[99] A contemporary French historian, however, who was probably better informed, says that when Philip besieged Châteauroux Henry and Richard proceeded together to its relief;[100] and it appears that John accompanied his father and brother, for we are told that “John who is called Lackland, being sent by his father, chanced to be present” when one of Richard’s mercenaries broke off an arm of a statue in the church of Our Lady, whereupon the figure bled as if it were alive; and John picked up the severed arm and carried it off as a holy relic.[101] One contemporary asserts that Richard’s subsequent desertion of his father was owing to Philip’s communicating to him a letter in which Henry proposed that Philip’s sister Adela, Richard’s betrothed, should marry John instead of Richard, and that John should succeed to the whole of his dominions except England and Normandy.[102] Whether this letter was genuine or forged, there is nothing to show; if such a proposition was really made by Henry, it was probably only as a temporary expedient for putting off Philip’s importunity on the awkward question of Adela’s marriage. In the autumn Henry and Richard were again reconciled,[103] and a little later both were for a moment reconciled to Philip by a common vow of crusade. [Sidenote: 1188–1189]