n the English side, the King's own men numbered 16,400 of all arms,
the contingents of his various captains and barons amounted to 20,306,
including knights, light cavalry, and archers on foot. In addition,
1000 carpenters and workmen followed the army, with some 6000
engineers, sappers, and miners including the men who served the
artillery. This was the force that left England, and any diminutions
in it, by lapse of time and service, were more than made up by the
reinforcements of the Earl of March, of the Duke of Exeter, of Sir
John Talbot, and the Prior of Kilmaine. So that the total of the army
that besieged Rouen was, at least, 45,000 men. This large force was
brought across the Seine, partly by the old bridge of Pont de l'Arche,
partly by a light and ingenious pontoon bridge made of planks
supported on watertight leather boats, which could be packed up and
carried with the army on the march.

The first appearance of the enemy was when the Duke of Beaufort (who
had been Earl of Dorset in 1415), appeared before the walls to summon
Rouen to surrender on terms. The citizens answered him with an attack
of cavalry. On Friday the 29th of July, Henry V. set out from Pont de
l'Arche by the right bank of the river, with a cloud of scouts before
his army, savage half-clad Irishmen, armed with light shields, short
javelins, and long knives, who plundered all the countryside, and rode
into camp at night astride of the cattle they had stolen. That same
evening, "the Friday before Lammas day," the King reached Rouen and
placed his troops all round the town under cover of the darkness. The
citizens awoke next morning to find Rouen girdled with English steel.
The die was irrevocably cast. Abandoned by their king, by both the
factions into which the rest of France was torn, the hardy burgesses
resolved to stand firm for the honour of a nation which had left them
to their fate. And, at first sight, the mighty walls, and moats, and
towers must have made even the English hesitate before attacking a
town that had prepared so stubborn a defence.

[Illustration: THE CHARTREUSE DE LA ROSE]

The account of the siege has very fortunately been preserved by two
eye-witnesses, and we are able to check any French sympathies that may
have crept into the accounts of Monstrelet, or of the Monk of St.
Denys, of Juvenal des Ursins, or of the "Journal d'un Bourgeois de
Paris," by comparing them not merely with the worthless "Chronique de
Normandie