That siege Louis seems to have now finally decided to abandon, probably with the intention of devoting himself instead to the consolidation of his conquests by the acquisition of eastern England. On 11th November--the meeting-day of the Council at Bristol--he appeared before Hertford and laid siege to the castle. For twenty-five days he plied his machines against it in vain, its commandant, Walter de Godardville, a knight of Falkes’s household, making a brave defence and a great slaughter of the assailants, till the siege was ended on 6th December[85] by a general truce made between the Royalist leaders and Louis on the condition that Hertford and Berkhamsted should be evacuated and surrendered to the French prince.[86] The constable of Berkhamsted, however--a German knight named Waleran, who had long been in John’s service--was unwilling to accept the truce, and held out against siege and assault till an order in the King’s name compelled him to surrender on 20th December.[87] When the truce expired, another was made, the condition being the evacuation and surrender of the royal castles of Orford and Norwich;[88] and this second truce seems to have been followed by a third, purchased probably by the surrender of Cambridge and either Colchester or Pleshy. At some date between the middle and the end of January, 1217, Louis called his adherents to a council at Cambridge, while the King’s guardians brought up their young sovereign from Gloucestershire to Oxford,[89] and opened negotiations for a peace, or, failing that, a further prolongation of the truce. Of peace Louis’s English supporters would not hear; and as the arrangements for another truce made but slow progress, Louis laid siege to the castle of Hedingham. Finally, however, a truce was made, its conditions being apparently the surrender of Hedingham and Colchester (or, if Colchester had been surrendered earlier, Pleshy), and perhaps some minor strongholds, and the continuance of “all things”--castles and other matters--as they were at that moment until a month after Easter.[90] [Sidenote: 1217]