any other feudal obligation, it was more to his mother than to his father; his possession of Aquitaine was their joint gift, but it was on Eleanor’s consent that the validity of the gift really rested; Henry possessed the dukedom only in right of his wife. On the higher ground of filial duty Henry’s and Eleanor’s claims to the obedience of their children were equal; Richard and Geoffrey suddenly found that those claims were conflicting, and that a choice must be made between the two. That the choice really lay between right and wrong is much plainer to us than it could be to these lads, of whom the elder was not yet sixteen, and both of whom were under the direct personal influence of their mother. On her, rather than on them, lies the responsibility for their wrong choice. Eleanor, captured by some of her husband’s scouts, was at once placed by him in strict confinement.[48] Her eldest son’s cause gained practically nothing by the adhesion of his young brothers. According to one account, both of them accompanied him to the siege of Drincourt in July.[49] The success of that siege, however, was due, not to any of the three, but to their allies the counts of Flanders and Boulogne; moreover, the death of the latter soon afterwards caused the Flemish troops to withdraw to their own country, and nothing further came of the expedition.[50] The rebel barons of Geoffrey’s duchy all submitted to his father in the autumn.[51] At a conference on September 25 at Gisors Henry made fair offers to all three of his sons; “but the king of France did not deem it advisable that the [English] king’s sons should make peace with their father.”[52] At some time before the end of the year Richard was knighted by Louis.[53] Young Henry and Geoffrey seem to have remained at the French court through the winter, but Richard characteristically went his own way; he returned to Aquitaine. Considering the extent of that country and the character of its previous relations with Henry II, it seems to have furnished a very small proportion of names to the list of avowed partizans of the young king; and the more important Aquitanian names which we do find there are those of men whose disobedience is very unlikely to have been in any way connected with that of Richard—Count William of Angoulême, Geoffrey of Rancogne, Geoffrey and Guy of Lusignan, William of Chauvigny, and Thomas of Coulonges in Poitou, Charles of Rochefort in Saintonge, Robert of Blé in the Limousin, and in Gascony Jocelyn of Maulay and Archbishop William of Bordeaux.[54] The first four of these needed no incitement from the young duke’s example, and the last two are not likely to have been influenced by it, to throw off their allegiance to his father. The Aquitanian rebels in 1173 would probably have been more numerous had not the barons of the Limousin been at that time too busy fighting among themselves to give much heed to disagreements between their rival rulers. The confusion