ate at once to pour
out upon the English camp with the whole population in a flood, and so
win through or die at least with weapons in their hands. Some news of
this despairing possibility may have suggested to King Henry that the
representations of the Archbishop of Canterbury were not without their
value. At any rate he yielded to solicitation, granted another truce,
and on the ninth of January opened negotiations once again.

This time the pressure of famine was so hard upon the ambassadors
themselves that they went on with discussions night and day, burning
torches and candles when the sun set. At last a definite instrument
was signed and sealed that guaranteed life and a free pass to the
garrison, their goods to the citizens, and great portion of its
privileges to the town. But the terms were hard enough. Three hundred
thousand crowns of gold[43] was fixed as the ransom of the city; the
chains were to be taken down from every street; ground sufficient for
an English palace was to be given up, which was eventually chosen at
the south-west corner of the town near the river; nine persons, among
whom were the Canon Robert de Livet and Alain Blanchart, were exempted
from the capitulation and "reserved to the mercy of the King," which
in one case at least meant death.

[Footnote 43: Eighteen million francs would represent the relative
value of this sum nowadays. It was not fully paid eleven years later.]

Upon a throne, and dressed in cloth of gold, Henry V. received the
keys of Rouen from Guy le Bouteiller, in the Chartreuse de la Rose.
Then the Duke of Exeter, as captain of the town, set up the English
standard over all her gates and above the donjon of the castle; and at
daylight on the twentieth of January the French garrison filed out of
Rouen across the Seine towards the Bridge of St. George on the left
bank, and were stripped of everything, save one suit of clothes, by
the English soldiers, as they went. Only two thousand men survived out
of the six thousand who had so gallantly come into Rouen to help
resist the enemy. While they escaped sadly into desolated Normandy,
King Henry V. was advancing from the Chartreuse; he moved slowly round
the city to the Porte Cauchoise, and behind him was borne a fox's
brush swinging upon a lance.[44] The bells rang and the cannon roared
salute as he entered Rouen, but of the inhabitants scarcely one had
strength to stand upright, not one had voice to cheer, and all
besought f