During the past five months the truce had been very ill kept. In less than two months from its commencement the homagers of both kings were ravaging each other’s lands,[1184] and Philip proposed to Richard a new expedient for ending their strife: a judicial combat between picked champions, five on either side, to take place in public, “so that the issue should make manifest to the people of both realms what was the mind of the Eternal King as to the rights of the two earthly sovereigns.” This scheme “pleased the king of England greatly, provided that each of the kings should be one of the five combatants on his own side and that they should fight each other on equal terms, armed and equipped alike”[1185]—whereupon the project fell to the ground. According to one English chronicler of the time, the next step taken by some of Richard’s enemies seems to have been an attempt to assassinate him. While he was staying at Chinon, early in 1195, there came to his court certain “_Accini_”—that is, “Assassins,” followers of “the Old Man of the Mountain”—or persons calling themselves such, to the number of fifteen. Some of them, seeking to approach the king’s person too closely, were arrested, and then stated that the king of France had sent them to kill his rival. Richard delayed passing sentence on them till their companions, who appear to have meanwhile made their escape, should be captured; of the part which they ascribed to Philip in the matter he took no notice.[1186] There the story abruptly ends. Whether these men were really “Assassins” in either sense of the word—whether, if so, they acted on orders from the “Old Man,” or from someone else, or on their own initiative, or what their motives or those of their instigator may have been—there is nothing to show. Their alleged charge against Philip, at any rate, can hardly deserve more consideration from history than it received from Richard.