The estates in France which John had inherited from his father, those in the north, were confiscated to the French crown. It was all much easier than fighting. While diplomacy gained for Philip these northern possessions and the power that went with them, he gained a like addition in the south by a system of letting alone. Simon de Montfort, a noble of Normandy, entered upon a crusade against the people of Albi, in Toulouse, a town and district heretical enough to attract the attention of the persecutor and rich enough to draw the gaze of the avaricious soldier of fortune. The destruction that ensued laid waste a fair country and wiped out the greater part of its population. A few years later the province fell in to the crown in default of direct heirs to the ruling family of Toulouse, and thus the south of France was added to the northern and western possessions which were accumulating under Philip’s control. Poor-spirited as was John, now called “Lackland,” he could not see himself deprived of his own land and his rival growing rich in other provinces without making some opposition. He entered into a coalition with the German emperor and with the Count of Flanders, who was one of Philip’s important vassals. Philip defeated the combined armies in the battle of Bouvines (1214) and thereby made himself the most powerful monarch in Europe. The success of the citizen soldiery established the reputation of the burgesses as strong and intelligent fighters and thereby struck terror to the hearts of nobles who were nursing plans of rebellion like those of the captured Count of Flanders. Yet nobles were one with burgesses in rejoicing over John’s final dismissal from any governing part in northern France and over the defeat of the intruding Germans. Never before in all her history had there been so universal a feeling of what it meant to be a Frenchman and to serve a country whose unity was symbolized by a king personally strong, strongly supported, in very truth the head controlling the members.