This unusually decisive engagement ought, in the opinion of many, to have ended the war. Conon now invaded the Foretvert domains and with proper precautions sent out _his_ ravaging parties, who soon taught their foes a lesson as to how to devastate a countryside. But the viscount, although sorely shaken and deserted now by many, arrogantly refused to make those concessions which Conon declared "his honor required ere he could think of peace." The war thus promised not to terminate until, by incessant raids and counter-raids, the peasants of both seigneuries had been brought to the edge of starvation. The viscount, of course, reckoned that at the end of their ordinary "forty days' service" Conon's vassals and allies would leave him. Most feudal levies were wont thus to melt away, after a very short campaign, and leave their leader bereft of almost all save his immediate retainers. Foretvert could then regather his men and resume the contest. But the saints so ordered it that Conon had been a thrifty seigneur as well as a popular suzerain and neighbor. He now offered his allies and vassals good deniers if they would serve until the autumn rains. He also hired the services of some fifty horsemen and two hundred footmen, led from Lorraine by an iron-handed soldier of fortune, Ritter Rainulf of the Moselle, who would put his German mercenaries at the beck of about any baron offering good silver. Mercenaries did not serve for "forty days," but for as many months as they received steady wages--a great advantage. Conon likewise hired a base-born fellow, Maître Jerôme. The knights complained that the baron gave him too great pay and confidence, but Maître Jerôme had been one of the king's best engineers in the siege of the great castle, Château Gaillard, on the Seine, when Philip Augustus took that supposedly impregnable fortress from John of England in 1204. Now the castle of Foretvert itself was almost as strong as St. Aliquis, and no siege thereof was worth considering. But the viscount had a smaller fortalice, Tourfière, which lay closer to Conon's lands and was not so formidable. [Sidenote: Siege of a Castle] Tourfière consisted merely of a single curtain of walls around the courtyard of a central keep, with, of course, a palisaded barbican before the gate. There was a moat, but not deep, and flooded only in wet weather, and the foundations of this stronghold did not rest, apparently, on solid rock--a matter upon which Maître Jerôme laid great stress after a discreet reconnaissance. Suddenly, to the amazement of many, Conon with all his forces appeared before Tourfière and summoned its castellan, Sire Gauthier, the viscount's nephew, to surrender--a demand refused with derision.