been commandant of Châteauroux for Philip at the time of Richard’s recent adventure there, was made prisoner by Richard, but broke his parole and escaped.[300] Next day Richard took leave of his father, “promising that he would serve him well and faithfully,” and set out again for Berry.[301] What he did there we are not told; but he seems to have recovered at least one—Palluau—of the castles which Philip had captured in the spring.[302] The war languished partly because the counts of Flanders and Blois and some other chief nobles of France refused to fight against princes who, like themselves, wore the Cross; and in October Philip asked Henry for another conference. It took place on October 7 at Châtillon, on the border of Touraine and Berry. A proposition that all conquests made by Philip from Henry and by Richard from Raymond of Toulouse since the beginning of the truce should be restored came to nothing through Philip’s demand for a security which Henry would not grant. Then, it seems, Richard offered to do what Philip had in vain required of him a few months before—to go to the French king’s court and stand to its judgement on all that had taken place between himself and the count of S. Gilles, “in order that peace might be made between his father and the king of France.”[303] The action of the French magnates may have opened Richard’s eyes to the unseemliness of all this strife between fellow-soldiers of the Cross and led him to see that peace, at almost any price, was absolutely necessary for the purpose which he had most at heart, the fulfilment of his vow of Crusade. His proposal, however, “greatly displeased” his father,[304] and Philip seems to have deemed the moment a favourable one for seeking to impose upon Richard some other requirements whose nature we are not told, but which led to “high and bad words” and finally resulted in the count of Poitou giving his lord paramount the lie direct and calling him a “vile recreant,” whereupon the conference broke up with a mutual defiance.[305] Philip went into Berry, re-took Palluau, and proceeded to Châteauroux, but only to withdraw the mercenaries whom he had left there and lead them back to Bourges, where he dismissed them.[306]