Still, Philip Augustus stood out. He wrote to Innocent a letter full of decorous grief for de Castelnau, in which he recited also his own complaints against Raymond. Although the Toulousain held one of the greatest baronies of the kingdom, he had lent no aid to his suzerain in the great struggle with John. Nay more, when Philip had taken Falaise he had found Toulousain soldiers among John’s garrison there. Nevertheless, the King of France refused to throw himself whole-heartedly into the Crusade. He repeated, once more, that Innocent must give him the means of raising the money for the expedition and must see to it that John remained quiet. He even read the Pope a lesson in law by insisting that Raymond could not legally be deprived of his lands and honours (the two words were almost synonymous to a mediæval) unless he had first been convicted of heresy, which was not the case. Whether or not he was actually displeased at the idea of the Crusade, is by no means certain. It would seem that he might well count on better service from North-French barons established in Languedoc than from its hereditary lords, accustomed as these last were to the independence of Paris. We find him attempting at least to limit the size of the crusading army. In his authorization to Eudes Duke of Burgundy and Hervé Count of Nevers to take the Cross, he stipulates that, between them, they must take no more than five hundred knights. Significantly enough, this letter is erased from the royal register. Events were to make the King wish to destroy any evidence which might put him in the position of having hindered the Crusade. Nevertheless, he persisted in refusing to join personally in the proposed expedition. Innocent did all that was possible to persuade him. After asking him, in a letter dated October 9, 1208, to assist the legates in persuading his subjects to take the Cross, the Pope wrote again, on February 9, 1209, asking him to designate a commander whom all were to obey, and so avoid the danger of faction in the crusading higher command. The King of France preferred that the entire responsibility for the undertaking should rest with the Pope. Little the French nobles and their followers cared for the cold caution of their King. Frenchmen had been and were to be foremost in every Crusade from Godfroy de Bouillon to Philip’s grandson, St. Louis. It is the peculiar and permanent gift of that people, not only to phrase ideas in clear and definite terms, but to act upon the ideas thus formulated with an intensity and passion that perpetually amazes those who do not know them. Finally, it is their glory to make of the ideas which they define so clearly, and upon which they act so intensely, the instruments of a vast and solid accomplishment. They are an astonishing nation.