The Fair of Lincoln had, as a contemporary writer emphatically says, “destroyed the [rebel] barons.”[295] It had deprived Louis of the bulk of his English allies, and left the French conquest of England to be accomplished, if accomplished at all, solely by French hands. Had the French reinforcements effected a landing and defeated the Royalists in one battle, such a conquest might still have been possible. But when the tidings of that S. Bartholomew’s day reached Louis, he at once saw that his cause was lost.[296] While the Marshal’s division of the English host was in Kent, the other division, with the Legate and the young King, had encamped round about London, more closely than the Royalists had yet approached the capital since Louis’s return. Gualo seems to have placed Henry with his mother in the safe shelter of Windsor castle while he himself ventured as near to London as Kingston; one day, however, a report reached him that the French were sallying forth to attack him, whereupon he rode hastily back to Windsor. This French sally may have been the “very fine raid, wherein the lesser folk won much gain,” which is said to have been made about this time by the young Duke of Brittany. Again there was ineffectual talk of peace. Then the Legate proposed a siege of the city; but for this the lay leaders deemed their forces insufficient, and they retired each man to his own quarters. Another unsuccessful attempt at pacification, made by a Cistercian monk who was one of the Pope’s penitentiaries, was followed by a meeting of the Queen-mother and the Count of Nevers, between Windsor and London; “they spoke amicably, and parted amicably, but without making peace.” Louis was so conscious of peril that he removed from the bishop’s house to the Tower, “to be more in safety.”[297] The news of the battle of Sandwich reached him late on the evening of Saturday, 26th August. On Monday, 28th, Robert of Dreux went under a safe-conduct from the King to speak with the Marshal at Rochester; next day one of the newly-captured French knights, Robert de Courtenay, was allowed to go to London to speak with Louis, Dreux remaining as a hostage in his stead.[298] After consulting with Courtenay and others, Louis decided to ask for a parley with William the Marshal in person.[299]