Elated with the success which had crowned his operations against the Castle of Rochester, King John, says the historian[122], marched through the kingdom like an implacable despot, inflicting every act of barbarity and spoliation on the relations and estates of those who had opposed his tyrannical measures. In the mean time, the barons, hopeless of ever retrieving their wretched state of affairs by their own unaided strength, had recourse to the last painful expedient of calling in foreign aid, and applied to Philip of France, who, as it favoured his own interest, and flattered his ambition, was easily persuaded to enter into their views. Intent upon this grand object, extensive preparations were set on foot; an armament was fitted out, and the following year, his son Louis the Dauphin was placed at its head, and with a fleet of seven hundred vessels set sail for the English coast. Landing at the port of Sandwich, the French auxiliaries were joined by those of the confederate barons, and presented so menacing a front that King John, becoming alarmed, left the capital and set out for Winchester. On his march through Sussex he was met by Gualo, the Pope’s nuncio, who had just arrived in England, and in whom the despotic monarch found a warm partisan. For the sacrilegious Dauphin having thus dared to invade the patrimony of St. Peter--as his Holiness was pleased to style the kingdom--it became his duty to wield the spiritual weapons of the Church against him. With this view he repaired to the French camp, and there excommunicated with all due solemnity the rash intruder and his whole army. Louis was at first intimidated by this awful denunciation, and made some concessions in order to ward off the coming vengeance; but when he found that the sun was not darkened--that the elements did not fight against him--that his camp was not depopulated, nor his march impeded, he resumed courage, set the legate at defiance, and proceeded in his expedition. As the first operation of the war, he invested the Castle of Rochester, which, having lost much of its defensive outworks in the previous siege, could offer no effectual resistance, and speedily fell into the hands of the Dauphin. He then proceeded to London, where he was received with triumph[123]. But the King dying the same year, his son Henry succeeded to the throne, and this event, for a time, restored public tranquillity, and rendered the cause of freedom independent of foreign influence.