actions as king was to make a five-year truce with the Ayyubids. In England Meanwhile, in France, Hugh le Brun de Lusignan ("Hugh the Swarthy"), like most of the lords of Poitou, backed Arthur of Brittany as the better heir to Richard the Lionheart when the latter's brother John Lackland acceded to the throne of England in 1199. John's mother Eleanor of Aquitaine traded English claims for their support of her son. To secure his position in La Marche, the widowed Hugh arranged a betrothal with the heiress Isabella of Angoulême. However John obtained her hand first, and married her in August 1200, thus depriving Hugh of La Marche and his brother of Eu in Normandy. The aggrieved Lusignans turned to their feudal overlord Philip Augustus, King of France, who demanded John's presence — a tactical impossibility — and declared John a "contumacious vassal." As the Lusignan allies managed to detain both Arthur and Eleanor, John surprised their unprepared forces at the castle of Mirebeau in July 1202, and took Hugh prisoner with 200 of his troops. King John's savage treatment of the captives caused outrage among his supporters, and his French barons began to desert him. The Lusignans' diplomatic rebellion resulted in the loss to England of half its territory in France, soon incorporated into his kingdom by Philip Augustus. (The other "half", Aquitaine, remained the possession of John's surviving mother Eleanor of Aquitaine). John died in 1216, leaving his son Henry III as king. His widow Isabella of Angoulême finally married Hugh X of Lusignan in 1220, and bore him five children. In 1247, Guilliame de Lusignan, a younger son of Hugh X and Isabella, moved from France to England along with two of his brothers at the request of their half-brother King Henry III. Guillaume (known in English as William de Valence) and his brothers were quickly placed in positions of power by the king; William was married to Joan de Munchensi (d. 1307), a granddaughter and heiress to the great William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke and was granted custody of the lands and the title of Earl of Pembroke, giving him great wealth and power in his new land. As a result he was unpopular and was heavily involved in the Second Barons' War, supporting the King and Prince Edward against the rebels led by Simon de Montfort. After the final defeat of the rebels