t a summons
to the people in the castle to surrender. They refused. Edward then
ordered his men to prepare for an assault on the following day.

Accordingly, on the following day the assault was made. The battle was
continued all day, but without success on the part of the assailants,
and when the evening came on Edward was obliged to call off his men.

[Illustration: STORMING OF THE CASTLE OF ROMORANTIN.]

The next morning, at a very early hour, the men were called to arms
again. A new assaulting force was organized, and at sunrise the trumpet
sounded the order for them to advance to the attack. Prince Edward
himself took the command at this trial, and by his presence and his
example incited the men to make the greatest possible efforts to batter
down the gates and to scale the walls. Edward was excited to a high
degree of resentment and rage against the garrison of the castle, not
only on account of the general obstinacy of their resistance, but
because, on the preceding day, a squire, who was attendant upon him, and
to whom he was strongly attached, was killed at his side by a stone
hurled from the castle wall. When he saw this man fall, he took a solemn
oath that he would never leave the place until he had the castle and all
that were in it in his power.

But, notwithstanding all the efforts of his soldiers, the castle still
held out. Edward's troops thronged the margin of the ditch, and shot
arrows so incessantly at the battlements that the garrison could
scarcely show themselves for an instant on the walls. Finally, they
made hurdles and floats of various kinds, by means of which large
numbers succeeded, half by swimming and half by floating, to get
across the ditch, and then began to dig in under the wall, while the
garrison attempted to stop their work by throwing down big stones upon
their heads, and pots of hot lime to eat out their eyes.

At another part the besiegers constructed great engines, such as were
used in those days, in the absence of cannon, for throwing rocks and
heavy beams of wood, to batter the walls. These machines also threw a
certain extraordinary combustible substance called Greek fire. It was
this Greek fire that, in the end, turned the scale of victory, for it
caught in the lower court of the castle, where it burned so furiously
that it baffled all the efforts of the besieged to extinguish it, and
at length they were compelled to surrender. Edward made the principal
commanders prison