into the town, and had to wait in
the fortress of St. Catherine. During his short tenure of office the
negotiations (preserved in the archives of Dieppe) which he was
obliged to attempt, in order to secure some sort of coalition between
the hostile factions against the English army, are a lamentable
revelation of the dissensions of the time. When the supremacy of the
Burgundians became inevitable, he went away, as we have seen, to
Spain, leaving his opponent, Guy le Bouteiller, to take command of the
castle of Rouen, and bring back with him Alain Blanchart with other
democratic exiles; and these two are prominent names in the siege that
is to come, for Blanchart was made captain of the picked burgess-troop
of the Arbaletriers of Rouen, Guillaume d'Hondetot was made bailli,
and Laghen, the Bastard of Arly, was made lieutenant.[41] The Royalist
Armagnacs were definitely abandoned, but, as we shall see, the unhappy
town gained little in the crisis of her fate from her Burgundian
sympathies.

[Footnote 40: For the whole of this chapter see Map B.]

[Footnote 41: During the same changes, Pierre Poolin was given the
office of Procureur-General of Rouen, and Jean Segneult exercised the
functions of the Mayoralty, though without the actual name.]

During all these days of civic anarchy the English troops were
steadily advancing to their goal. Though no predetermined plan is
proved to have existed in the mind of Henry V., the movements of his
army resulted in a very definite and successful campaign. Landing on
the elbow of the coast of Normandy, where no one expected him, he cut
the strength of her resistance in two by a rapid march from north to
south, paralysing the warlike nobles of Cotentin, and forcing the
hostile Angevins and the uncertain Bretons to remain neutral. Then,
after sending out detachments to east and west, he concentrated on the
Seine, crossed it above Rouen, and seized Pont de l'Arche so as to cut
off her best communication with Paris, crush her between his fleet,
his army, and his garrison at Honfleur, and ensure the conquest of
Normandy beneath her walls.

While the toils were thus closing in upon her, while she was being
slowly cut off from crippled France, from Paris, where the citizens
had nothing better to do than massacre the Armagnacs, Rouen sent
hurriedly for help to the Duke of Burgundy. They only got brave words
from his son, the Count of Charolais, who used all the taxes of the
northern town