Part 36 (1/2)
[Footnote 837: 9 March. _Journal du siege_, pp. 56, 57.]
[Footnote 838: _Journal du siege_, p. 64.]
In the beginning of March the besiegers saw approaching the Norman va.s.sals, summoned by the Regent. But they were only six hundred and twenty-nine lances all told, and they were only bound to serve for twenty-six days. Under the leaders.h.i.+p of Scales, Pole, and Talbot, the English continued the investment works as best they could.[839] On the 10th of March, two and a half miles east of the city, they occupied without opposition the steep slope of Saint-Loup and began to erect a bastion there, which should command the upper river and the two roads from Gien and Pithiviers, at the point where they meet near the Burgundian gate.[840] On the 20th of March they completed the bastion named London, on the road to Mans. Between the 9th and 15th of April two new bastions were erected towards the west, Rouen nine hundred feet east of London, Paris nine hundred feet from Rouen. About the 20th they fortified Saint-Jean-le-Blanc across the Loire and established a watch to guard the crossing of the river.[841] This was but little in comparison with what remained to be done, and they were short of men; for they had less than three thousand round the town.
Wherefore they fell upon the peasants. Now that the season for tending the vines was drawing near, the country folk went forth into the fields thinking only of the land; but the English lay in wait for them, and when they had taken them prisoners, set them to work.[842]
[Footnote 839: Boucher de Molandon, _L'armee anglaise vaincue par Jeanne d'Arc_, ch. ii. Jarry, _Le compte de l'armee anglaise_, pp. 60, 107, 110, 112.]
[Footnote 840: _Journal du siege_, pp. 57, 58. Abbe Dubois, _Histoire du siege_, dissertation vi.]
[Footnote 841: _Chronique de la Pucelle_, pp. 265, 267. Morosini, vol.
iv, supplement xiii.]
[Footnote 842: _Journal du siege_, p. 58.]
In the opinion of those most skilled in the arts of war, these bastions were worthless. They were furnished with no stabling for horses. They could not be built near enough to render a.s.sistance to each other; the besieger was in danger of being himself besieged in them. In short, from these vexatious methods of warfare the English reaped nothing but disappointment and disgrace. The Sire de Bueil, one of the defenders, perceived this when he was reconnoitring.[843] In fact it was so easy to pa.s.s through the enemy's lines that merchants were willing to run the risk of taking cattle to the besieged. There entered into the town, on the 7th of March, six horses loaded with herrings; on the 15th, six horses with powder; on the 29th, cattle and victuals; on the 2nd of April, nine fat oxen and horses; on the 5th, one hundred and one pigs and six fat oxen; on the 9th, seventeen pigs, horses, sucking-pigs, and corn; on the 13th, coins with which to pay the garrison; on the 16th, cattle and victuals; on the 23rd, powder and victuals. And more than once the besieged had carried off, in the very faces of the English, victuals and ammunition destined for the besiegers and including casks of wine, game, horses, bows, forage, and even twenty-six head of large cattle.[844]
[Footnote 843: _Le Jouvencel_, vol. i, p. xxii; vol. ii, p. 44.]
[Footnote 844: _Journal du siege_, pp. 56, 62.]
The siege was costing the English dear,--forty thousand _livres tournois_ a month.[845] They were short of money; they were obliged to resort to the most irritating expedients. By a decree of the 3rd of March King Henry had recently ordered all his officers in Normandy to lend him one quarter of their pay.[846] In their huts of wood and earth, the men-at-arms, who had endured much from the cold, now began to suffer hunger.
[Footnote 845: Jarry, _Le compte de l'armee anglaise_, pp. 50, 58.]
[Footnote 846: Pierre Sureau's account in Jarry, _Le compte de l'armee anglaise_, proofs and ill.u.s.trations, no. vi, pp. 45, 46.]
The wasted fields of La Beauce, of l'ile-de-France, and of Normandy could furnish them with no great store of sheep or oxen. Their food was bad, their drink worse. The vintage of 1427 had been bad, that of the following year was poor and weak--more like sour grapes than wine.[847] Now an old English author has written of the soldiers of his country:
”They want their porridge and their fat bull-beeves: Either they must be dieted like mules And have their provender tied to their mouths Or piteous they will look, like drowned mice.”[848]
[Footnote 847: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, pp. 221, 222 _et seq._]
[Footnote 848: Shakespeare, _Henry VI_, part i, act i, scene ii.
According to M. G. Duval the first part of this play was adapted from one of Shakespeare's predecessors.]
A sudden humiliation still further weakened the English. Captain Poton de Saintrailles and the two magistrates, Guyon du Fosse and Jean de Saint-Avy, who had gone on an emba.s.sy to the Duke of Burgundy, returned to Orleans on the 17th of April. The Duke had granted their request and consented to take the town under his protection. But the Regent, to whom the offer had been made, would not have it thus.
He replied that he would be very sorry if after he had beaten the bush another should go off with the nestlings.[849] Therefore the offer was rejected. Nevertheless the emba.s.sy had been by no means useless, and it was something to have raised a new cause of quarrel between the Duke and the Regent. The amba.s.sadors returned accompanied by a Burgundian herald who blew his trumpet in the English camp, and, in the name of his master, commanded all combatants who owed allegiance to the Duke to raise the siege. Some hundreds of archers and men-at-arms, Burgundians, men of Picardy and of Champagne, departed forthwith.[850]
[Footnote 849: Jean Chartier, _Chronique_, vol. i, p. 65.]
[Footnote 850: _Journal du siege_, pp. 69, 70. _Chronique de la Pucelle_, p. 270. Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 317 _et seq._ Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 19, 20, 21; vol. iv, supplement xiv, p. 311. Jarry, _Le compte de l'armee anglaise_, pp. 68 _et seq._ Boucher de Molandon, _L'armee anglaise vaincue par Jeanne d'Arc_, p. 145.]
On the next day, at four o'clock in the morning, the citizens emboldened and deeming the opportunity a good one, attacked the camp of Saint-Laurent-des-Orgerils. They slew the watch and entered the camp, where they found piles of money, robes of martin, and a goodly store of weapons. Absorbed in pillage, they paid no heed to defending themselves and were surprised by the enemy, who in great force had hastened to the place. They fled pursued by the English who slew many.
On that day the town resounded with the lamentations of women weeping for a father, a husband, a brother, kinsmen.[851]
[Footnote 851: _Journal du siege_, p. 70.]
Within those walls, in a s.p.a.ce where there was room for not more than fifteen thousand inhabitants, forty thousand[852] were huddled together, one vast mult.i.tude agonised by all manner of suffering; depressed by domestic sorrow; racked with anxiety; maddened by constant danger and perpetual panic. Although the wars of those days were not so sanguinary as they became later, the sallies of the inhabitants of Orleans were the occasion of constant and considerable loss of life. Since the middle of March the English bullets had fallen more into the centre of the town; and they were not always harmless.