With these ships Louis, whose force is said to have now consisted of more than three thousand men, proceeded to Rye, which the English garrison, seeing they could not defend it, evacuated.[107] By this time the Marshal[108] and the other members of the Council were on their way up from the west of England to a general muster of the Royalist forces at Dorking. Thence, on 28th February, a letter was despatched in the King’s name to the townsfolk of Rye, bidding them take courage, give no hostages to Louis, and make no terms with him, for they would speedily receive “greater succour than they could believe possible.” The Bishop of Winchester, the Marshal, the Earls of Chester, Ferrers, and Aumale, nearly all the barons of the western March (Walter de Lacy, Hugh and Roger de Mortimer, Walter and Roger de Clifford, William de Beauchamp, John of Monmouth, “and others”), and several other well-known leaders (William de Harcourt, Engelard de Cigogné, William de Cantelupe, Falkes de Bréauté, Robert de Vipont, Richard FitzRoy), with a multitude of knights, men-at-arms, and crossbowmen, and some loyal Welshmen, were setting out for Rye at once, and the King himself was about to follow with the Legate and a crowd of clergy and “crusaders.”[109] But before this letter was written Louis had made his escape. After appointing his nephew Enguerrand de Coucy as his representative in England, with orders to go to London “and not stir thence upon any account,” and leaving a French garrison in Rye,[110] he had slipped away to Dover, and thence sailed on 27th or 28th February to France.[111]