marched up from Bourges and relieved it.[226] John’s next military undertaking, the siege of Brezolles, met with no better success.[227] Still he had done the best he could for his brother’s interest, and thereby also for his own. Accordingly, next year Richard “laid aside all his anger and ill-will towards his brother John,” and restored to him a portion of his forfeited possessions. It was indeed only a small portion, consisting of the county of Mortain and the honours of Gloucester and Eye “in their entirety, but without their castles.” To this was added, as some compensation for the other lands which he had lost, a yearly pension of £8000 Angevin.[228] [Sidenote: 1196–1198] This arrangement seems to have taken effect from Michaelmas 1195.[229] It gave John once more an honourable and independent maintenance, but left him without territorial power. His only chance of regaining this in Richard’s lifetime was to earn it by loyalty to Richard. For the next three years, therefore, he kept quiet; nothing is heard of him save an occasional notice of his presence in Normandy, either in his brother’s company or acting for his brother’s interest. When Philip seized Nonancourt in 1196, John retaliated by seizing Gamaches.[230] On May 19 in the same year he and Mercadier, the leader of Richard’s foreign mercenaries, made a plundering expedition into the French king’s territories as far as Beauvais, where they captured the bishop, who had long been one of Richard’s most determined enemies; they then went on to the bishop’s castle of Milli, took it by assault, razed it, and returned to Normandy in triumph to present their captive to Richard.[231] On October 16, 1197, when the king and the archbishop of Rouen made their agreement for the building of a castle at Andely--the famous Château-Gaillard--it was ratified in a separate charter by John; an unusual proceeding, which has been thought to imply that he was now again acknowledged as his brother’s destined heir.[232] In 1198 Philip made another attack upon Normandy and burned Evreux and seven other towns. John fired a ninth, Neubourg; Philip, seeing the flames and supposing them to have been kindled by his own men, sent a body of troops to bid them go no farther, on which John fell upon the troops and captured eighteen knights and a crowd of men-at-arms.[233] [Sidenote: 1199]