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Updated: June 25, 2025
The following year, as he was still in opposition to the Pope, a league was formed for the invasion of France, between John, his nephew Otho, Emperor of Germany, and many other friends of Innocent, but it only resulted in a shameful defeat at Bouvines, where Philippe signalized his courage and generalship, and John and Otho fled in disgrace.
Lady Ambrose tells the tale: "He said to me in a very solemn voice, 'What a terrible defeat that was which we had at Bouvines! I answered timidly not thinking we were at war with anyone that I had seen nothing about it in the papers.
John then invaded France, in alliance with Otho IV, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and others, but was defeated at Bouvines, near Lille, 1214. This ended John's endeavors to recover his lost power in France, and he could only think henceforth of ruling peaceably his own kingdom and preserving, to his own advantage, his now close connection with the Pope.
The nobility, reduced to moderation by the enfeebling consequences of extensive foreign wars, became comparatively impotent in their attempted efforts against domestic freedom. Those of Flanders and Brabant, also, were almost decimated in the terrible battle of Bouvines, fought between the Emperor Othon and Philip Augustus, king of France.
Cæsar's adventurous crossing of the Rhine was a northern crossing. The Capetian monarchy was saved on its eastern front at Bouvines, in that same territory. The Austro-Spanish advance came down from it, to be checked at St. Quentin. Louis XIV.'s main struggle for power upon the marches of his kingdom concentrated here.
However that may be, the communal forces evidently filled an important place in the king's army at Bouvines, and maintained it brilliantly.
Few medieval battles were so far-reaching in their consequences as Bouvines , to which England owes her Magna Carta, Germany the magnificent and stormy autumn of the Hohenstauffen dynasty, France the consolidation of her long-divided provinces under an absolutist monarchy. At ordinary times there were in medieval Europe two groups of states with separate interests and types of polity.
It was about July first that Louis set out to raise the siege of La Roche-au-Moine, and on the 27th the decisive battle of Bouvines was fought in the north before John had resolved on his next move. The coalition, on which John had laboured so long and from which he hoped so much, was at last in the field.
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