No second attempt to relieve it was possible. It may have been for the purpose of endeavouring to collect fresh troops from the western districts, which were as yet untouched by the war, that John about this time visited his old county of Mortain, and even went as far as Dol,[426] which his soldiers had taken in the previous year. But his military resources in Normandy were exhausted. The Marshal bluntly advised him to give up the struggle. “Sire,” said William, “you have not enough friends; if you provoke your enemies to fight, you will diminish your own force; and when a man provokes his enemies, it is but just if they make him rue it.” “Whoso is afraid, let him flee!” answered John. “I myself will not flee for a year; and if indeed it came to fleeing, I should not think of saving myself otherwise than you would, wheresoever you might be.” “I know that well, sire,” replied William; “but you, who are wise and mighty and of high lineage, and whose work it is to govern us all, have not been careful to avoid irritating people. If you had, it would have been better for us all. Methinks I speak not without reason.”[427] The king, “as if a sword had struck him to the heart,” spoke not a word, but rushed to his chamber; next morning he was nowhere to be found; he had gone away in a boat, almost alone, and it was only at Bonneville that his followers rejoined him. This was apparently at the beginning of October.[428] For two months more he lingered in the duchy, where his position was growing more hopeless day by day. At the end of October, or early in November, he took the decisive step of dismantling Pont-de-l’Arche, Moulineaux, and Montfort,[429] three castles which, next to Château-Gaillard, would be of the greatest value to the French for an advance upon Rouen. To Rouen itself he returned once more on November 9, and stayed there four days.[430] On the 12th he set out for Bonneville, accompanied by the queen, and telling his friends that he intended to go to England to seek counsel and aid from his barons and people there, and would soon return. In reality his departure from the capital was caused by a rumour which had reached him of a conspiracy among the Norman barons to deliver him up to Philip Augustus. At Bonneville, therefore, he lodged not in the town but in the castle, and only for a few hours; the Marshal and one or two others alone were warned of his intention to set forth again before daybreak, and the little party had got a start of seven leagues on the road to Caen before their absence was discovered by the rest of the suite, of whom “some went after them, and the more part went back.”[431] Still John was reluctant to leave Normandy; he went south to Domfront and west to Vire before he again returned to the coast at Barfleur on November 28; and even then he spent five days at Gonneville and one at Cherbourg before he finally took ship at Barfleur on December 5, to land at Portsmouth next day.[432]