On the 12th of March and the 13th of June, 1303, at two assemblies of barons, prelates, and legists held at the Louvre, in presence of the king, which several historians have considered to have been states- general, one of the crown’s most intimate advisers, William of Plasian, proposed, against Boniface, a form of accusation which imputed to him, beyond his ambition and his claims to absolutism, crimes as improbable as they were hateful. It was demanded that the Church should be governed by a lawful pope, and the king, as defender of the faith, was pressed to appeal to the convocation of a general council. On the 24th of June, in the palace-garden, a great crowd of people assembled; and, after a sermon preached in French, the form of accusation against Boniface, and the appeal to the future council, were solemnly made public. The pope meanwhile did not remain idle; he protested against the imputations of which he was the subject. “Forty years ago,” he said, “we were admitted a doctor of laws, and learned that both powers, the temporal and the spiritual, be ordained of God. Who can believe that such fatuity can have entered into our mind? But who can also deny that the king is subject unto us on the score of sin? . . . We be disposed to grant unto him every grace. . . . So long as I was cardinal, I was French in heart; since then, we have testified how we do love the king. . . . Without us, he would not have even one foot on the throne. We do know all the secrets of the kingdom. We do know how the Germans, the Burgundians, and the folks who speak the Oc tongue do love the king. If he mend not, we shall know how to chastise him, and treat him as a little boy (_sicut unum garcionem_), though greatly against our will.” On the 13th of April, Boniface declared Philip excommunicate if he persisted in preventing the prelates from attending at Rome. Philip, being warned, effected the arrest at Troyes of the priest who was bringing the pope’s letter to his legate in France. The legate took to flight. Boniface, on his side, being warned that the king was appealing against him to an approaching council, declared by a bull, on the 15th of August, that it appertained to him alone to summon a council. After this bull, there was full expectation that another would be launched, which would pronounce the deposition of the king. And a new bull was actually prepared at Rome on the 5th of September, and was to be published on the 8th. It did not expressly depose the king; it merely announced that measures would be taken more serious even than excommunication. Philip had taken his precautions. He had demanded and obtained from the great towns, churches, and universities more than seven hundred declarations of support in his appeal to the future council, and an engagement to take no notice of the decree which might be issued by the pope to release the king’s subjects from their oath of allegiance. Only a few, and amongst them the Abbot of Citeaux, gave him a refusal. The order of the Templars gave only a qualified support. At the approaching advent of the new bull which was being anticipated, the king resolved to act still more roughly and speedily. Notification must be sent to the pope of the king’s appeal to the future council. Philip could no longer confide this awkward business to his chancellor, Peter Flotte; for he had fallen at Courtrai, in the battle against the Flemings. William of Nogaret undertook it, at the same time obtaining from the king a sort of blank commission authorizing and ratifying in advance all that, under the circumstances, he might consider it advisable to do. Notification of the appeal had to be made to the pope at Anagni, his native town, whither he had gone for refuge, and the people of which, being zealous in his favor, had already dragged in the mud the lilies and the banner of France. Nogaret was bold, ruffianly, and clever. He repaired in haste to Florence, to the king’s banker, got a plentiful supply of money, established communications in Anagni, and secured, above all, the co-operation of Sciarra Colonna, who was passionately hostile to the pope, had been formerly proscribed by him, and, having fallen into the hands of corsairs, had worked at the oar for them during many a year rather than reveal his name and be sold to Boniface Gaetani. On the 7th of September, 1303, Colonna and his associates introduced Nogaret and his following into Anagni, with shouts of “Death to Pope Boniface! Long live the King of France!” The populace, dumbfounded, remained motionless. The pope, deserted by all, even by his own nephew, tried to touch the heart of Colonna himself, whose only answer was a summons to abdicate, and to surrender at discretion. “Those be hard words,” said Boniface, and burst into tears.