surrendered on June 24,[449] and in a few days Arques and Verneuil followed its example.[450] Thus did Normandy forsake--as Anjou and Maine had already forsaken--the heir of its ancient rulers for the king of the French. Philip’s next undertaking, the conquest of Aquitaine, was likely to be considerably facilitated by the fact that there was no longer a third person who could claim to stand between him and his rival as lawful lady of the land; for Eleanor had died on April 1.[451] In the middle of August Philip marched upon Poitou. Robert of Turnham, John’s seneschal there, did what he could for its defence; but he was powerless against the indifference of the people and the active hostility of the Lusignans and William des Roches;[452] and in a few weeks the whole county, except La Rochelle, Niort, and Thouars, had submitted to the French king.[453] There, however, Philip’s progress ended. He could not touch the county of Angoulême, for it belonged not to John, but to John’s wife; while his very successes turned Gascony against him, for the Gascons were quick to perceive how much greater would be their chances of practical independence under a king who would henceforth be parted from them by the whole width of the Bay of Biscay, than under one whose territories now stretched without a break from the Channel to their own border. Nor had John failed to recognize that in this quarter lay his best hope--at the moment indeed his only hope--of checking Philip’s advance. He at once devoted twenty-eight thousand marks of the treasure which he was gathering in England to the hire of thirty thousand soldiers, who were to be enrolled for his service in Gascony by one Moreve, a brother of the archbishop of Bordeaux, in readiness to join the forces of the king himself whenever he should land on their coast.[454] From Poitiers, therefore, Philip returned to his own dominions, and no further military movement on either side was made throughout the winter. [Sidenote: 1205]