and to the merchants involved. The rebels were past listening to such
strictures, however, and so the cycle of short, sharp outbreaks of violence,
interspersed with truces, continued. On her side, Blanche persisted in the
hope that the king would provide the military assistance that she needed.
Amongst other gifts and concessions, she sent him 200 cheeses in 1217–
that is, the kind of detail that gives French history its specialflavour.^138
The course of the‘War of the Champenois Succession’was neatly
paralleled by the Church’s struggle to unleash its spiritual weapons.
Innocent III had raised the spectre of ecclesiastical sanctions as early
as 1213–that is, from the very beginning of the‘affair’. It was left to his
successor, Honorius III, to convert these warnings into action. The new
pope dispatchedfinal warnings to all of the guilty parties and summoned
Erard and Philippa to appear before him. The couple did their best to
wriggle out of the situation. Philippa even fell‘diplomatically ill’at one
particular juncture. However, the prelates of eastern France proved
quite remarkably reluctant to carry out the papal threats. The main
obstacle was provided by the bishop of Langres, with the support of
the bishops of Troyes and Auxerre. Things reached such a pass that
Honorius threatened thefirst two of these with suspension if they did not
declare the excommunications. Finally, the pope pronounced the sen-
tences himself. In spiritual as in temporal matters, therefore, the‘affair’
was rising to its peak in early 1218.^139
The fulcrum of the war was the events that took place in the late spring
and early summer of that year. In the end, it was external factors that
broke the deadlock. Blanche was able to take advantage of the fact that
the emperor-elect and king of Sicily, Frederick II, had invaded Lorraine
and was besieging Duke Theobald in the fortress of Amance. Along with
a number of allies who hailed from the Franco-German border, Blanche
marched to join Frederick, burning Nancyen route, and the conjunction
of forces proved quite sufficient to force Theobald’s surrender. It soon
became apparent that this had cleared the decks for Blanche to focus
on Erard himself, and on his supporters in south-eastern Champagne.
Within a matter of weeks, Simon of Châteauvillain, Erard of Chacenay
and Simon of Joinville had all been obliged to make some kind of peace.
Indeed, the latter pair could soon be numbered among several prominent
rebels who took‘an honourable exit from a hopeless situation’, heading
(^138) For the early phases of the war, see d’Arbois de Jubainville,Histoire, iv, part 1, 134–41.
(^139) Seeibid., iv, part 1, 141–51.
62 Breakthrough and High Point (c. 1191–1237)