Seeing that he could get no satisfaction by negotiation, Philip prepared for war. Marching from the French part of Berry into the Aquitanian part, he seized Issoudun and Graçay and advanced upon Châteauroux.[250] It is doubtful whether Henry and Richard set out together to check him, or whether Henry sent forward Richard and John, each at the head of a body of troops, to defend Châteauroux till he himself could join them.[251] At any rate, by midsummer the combined action of father and sons had caused Philip to raise the siege and decide upon trying his fortune against them in the open field. On the eve of S. John the two armies were drawn up facing each other in battle array, ready to engage next morning. At the last moment, however, the kings made a truce and withdrew each to his own domains. Two English authorities assign the most important part in the preliminary negotiations to Richard. According to Gervase of Canterbury the first overtures came from the French side, and were addressed to the count of Poitou; Count Philip of Flanders contrived to get speech with him and urged upon him the importance, for his own future interest, of making a friend of the king of France; after some discussion Richard followed Flanders back through the French lines to the tent of Philip Augustus, held a long private colloquy with him, and “at length returned, with his mind at rest, to his own comrades in arms.” He had gone without his father’s knowledge; Henry, when he heard of the incident, “suspected that it meant treachery, not peace,” and sent a request to some of the French nobles that they would come and confer with himself. They complied; he commissioned them to ask Philip for a truce of two years, on the plea of a vow of Crusade; Philip consented, but when his consent was announced Henry declared he had changed his mind—he would have no truce. Philip on hearing this ordered an attack at break of day. Henry grew alarmed; the midsummer daybreak was very near, for it was already past midnight, when he hurriedly called his son. “What shall we do? what counsel dost thou give me?” “What counsel can I give,” said Richard, “when thou hast refused the truce which yesterday thou desiredst? We cannot ask for it again now without great shame.” Moved, however, by his father’s evident distress, he offered to face the shame. He went; he found Philip already armed for battle; bare-headed he knelt before him, offered him his sword, and begged him for a truce, promising that if Henry should break it in any way he, Count Richard, would submit his own person in Paris to the judgement of the French king. On this condition Philip gave a reluctant consent to the truce.[252] Gerald of Wales, on the other hand, represents the first advances as having been made by Henry in a letter to Philip proposing peace on the following terms: that Aloysia should be given in marriage to John, with the counties of Poitou and Anjou and all the