At Rome, the diplomatic struggle must have been bitter. It was not a light thing to ask Innocent publicly to eat his words, and to act on the assumption that the Aragonese version of matters was a mere tissue of lies. On the other hand, I repeat, any central authority in the Middle Ages was far more at the mercy of its agents on the spot than is the case to-day with rapid transit and the telegraph. For the Pope to sustain the Aragonese and disavow Arnaut Amalric and his supporters would have been to go clean counter to the expressed opinion of practically every important Churchman north of the Pyrenees within a radius of 200 miles of Toulouse. Nevertheless, the issue was so evenly balanced that for five months, while the agents of Aragon and of the Crusade continued to set out their respective positions, no decision was reached. While the whole future of the Crusade thus hung in suspense, Paris seemed for the first time ready to move. Philip Augustus hoped to round off his successes against the Plantagenet by taking from him England as well. But before a French army could cross the Channel, the fullest possible diplomatic assistance from the Papacy was desired. Therefore, in March 1213, the King of France called a general assembly of his barons to decide what force should follow his son, Prince Louis, crusading to Languedoc. To work up sentiment, the zealous Bishop Fulk of Toulouse and Guy de Vaux-Cernay, Bishop of Carcassonne, journeyed to Paris, the latter having appointed the future St. Dominic to administer his diocese in his absence. To oppose them, came the Bishop of Barcelona, as Pedro’s ambassador, armed with Innocent’s January letters putting an end to the Crusade and disavowing the legates! Here was a pretty complication. Philip Augustus knew how to be shifty himself on occasion, but even he must have been puzzled as to the true state of affairs in Rome. However, it was decided that a large force should move south under Prince Louis. Only Innocent’s own command received about a month later, that Philip should take up the Pope’s quarrel with John by sending the young Louis to invade England, prevented the French Monarchy, then and there, from taking its part in the Albigensian Crusade.