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provisions. One of the first precautions taken by the commandant, Guy le Bouteillier, was to send twenty thousand destitute persons out of the town; many women and children were thus thrown upon the enemy's hands; but Henry directed his troops to send among them a shower of arrows, the bows slightly drawn, in order rather to frighten them back into the town than to hurt them. The miserable creatures, as might easily have been foreseen, were unable to regain the place, and took shelter in the ditches, where they remained for days in the utmost distress, many of the women being actually taken in labour while thus exposed. It is said that the groans of this wretched multitude at length moved both the assailants and the garrison, so as to obtain from the former a supply of food, and from the latter leave to return. The sufferings of the people in the town were truly dreadful. Every animal, how disgusting soever, that could be eaten, was devoured; not horses alone, and asses, but dogs, cats, rats, mice. But of these the supply was necessarily limited, and all kinds of skins and leather were greedily seized on in the vain hope that nourishment might be extracted from them. Thus the pangs of hunger were soon exchanged for those of sickness, the constant follower in the train of famine; and contemporary historians paint in the most dismal colours the wretchedness which now prevailed; the air filled with howling and groans, the houses and streets with the dead and the dying;

Much greater numbers are given in some accounts.

robust men prostrate, as if paralysed; women frantic from the unhappy fate of their offspring; infants clinging to the breasts of mothers already dead; maidens prostituting themselves for a morsel of bread; and other scenes not to be commemorated lest disgust should be mingled with pity. Nor was it the least of the evils which fell upon this unhappy city, that the law lost all its force, and whether maddened with hunger or with passions of a more guilty origin, the common people regarded no rights of person or of property as sacred. For five long months did this misery endure, and above thirty thousand were cut off beside those who perished by the sword.'

The courage of the besieged was of the very highest order and of every kind. No opportunity was left unimproved of engaging the enemy when it was possible to sally forth and combat. But the more rare and more difficult virtue of fortitude also shone conspicuous. When Henry, reckoning upon the effects of their unparalleled sufferings, intimated that he would grant no terms, and required them to surrender at discretion, they with one voice refused, and desired that their agonies might continue, preferring to sink under hunger and pestilence rather than trust to the mercy of one quite capable of delivering them over to the executioner. To one of their deputations he gave for answer that they

'T. Liv., 68. T. Elm., 196. Monstrelet, ch. cci. He says 50,000 perished.

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deserved their fate, because by their resistance they flew in the face of Heaven, which had plainly decided in his favour by the victories he had been allowed to gain. To another he complained bitterly of a prelate who had preached against him, and on whom he vowed he should be revenged; nor was his vow broken. The garrison, thus treated and thus threatened, resolved to make one great and last effort, as every application at Paris for help was met with the statement that the civil war required all the troops which could keep the field. They determined to undermine the wall for many yards, and to prop it with timber, which being set on fire, and bringing down the stones, would leave a large gap, by which their whole armed force might rush, and in a compact body cut its way through the besieging army, trusting to chance for the saving of their wretched lives. The rumour of this desperate but formidable design reached Henry, and he allowed them to capitulate, though upon terms very different from those which their gallant defence deserved. 2 All pro

Jan. 19, 1419.

perty was to be safe, provided the owner swore allegiance to England. The persons and possessions of those who refused were to be at the King's mercy. A sum of nearly half a million was to be paid; one moiety within ten days, the remainder in five weeks. The whole personal property, to the very ornaments of their uniforms, was to be taken

1 T. Liv., 69.

2 Rym., ix. 664. Monstrelet, ch. ccii. Juv. des Urs., 357.

from the brave garrison; an I this eruel an 1 insulting stipulation was so rigorously enforced, that the officers were stripped as they marched out; and hence those who came behind and witnessed this outrage, cast into the river such things as they could not conceal about their persons. Finally seven individuals were exempted from the amnesty granted. One of them, the leader of the Commons, Allan Blanche, Henry caused to be beheaded immediately after the surrender; another, the prelate, of whom mention has been made, ended his days in a dark and loathsome dungeon. The payment of ransom enabled the rest to escape with their lives.1

When Henry entered the town, with a splendour and a pomp which formed a mighty contrast to the condition of his miserable conquest, he first of all proceeded to the cathedral, and kneeling at the great altar, commanded the priests to sing a Te Deum for his success. It is unnecessary to inquire what must have been the effect of this pious scene upon the unhappy people, the victims of his sordid and bloodthirsty ambition, when now they beheld him profaning their church and insulting its pastors by his orders to thank heaven for the unexampled sufferings he had been permitted to inflict upon themselves and their native land!

The operations of the siege had not obtained for the surrounding country any respite from the inexorable system of depredation which Henry connived

Monstrelet, ch. ccii.

at,―certainly never exerted himself to check. The whole neighbouring districts, and even Brittany and the Isle of France, were ravaged by parties of plunderers, whose cruelties kept pace with their insatiable thirst of spoil. The sordid exploits in this kind of one body of his troops are much dwelt upon by the writers of that age. It was a multitude, ill-clothed, worse armed, wholly undisciplined, of wild Irish, to the number of some thousands. These savages had only one shoe and stocking, the other leg was bare; a target and strange kind of knife was all their armour; some few only were mounted, and rode without any saddle. They were the terror of the country, for they rifled whatever place they entered, and carried off men and women, and even children in their cradles, placing them on the backs of cows which they had stolen, and selling them for slaves. 1

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The capture of Rouen was followed by the fall of Fécamp, Caudebec, Mantes, and about forty other towns; and the terror struck into the kingdom, Brittany and Isle de France as well as Normandy, by the ravages of the English troops, appears to have at length awakened in the chiefs of the contending factions which divided the government some feelings, if not of compassion for their country or remorse for the miseries they had brought upon it, at least of apprehension that the power they were contending for might speedily be wrested from both

1 Monstrelet, ch. exevi.