looking for the weak point in
the ramparts, the place where he might make a breach and put up his
scaling ladders. For his plan was to take Orleans by assault. William
Glasdale said to him, "My Lord, look well at your city. You have a
good bird's-eye view of it from here."

At this moment a cannon-ball breaks off a corner of the window recess,
a stone from the wall strikes Salisbury, carrying away one eye and one
side of his face. The shot had been fired from La Tour Notre-Dame.
That at least was generally believed. It was never known who had fired
it. A townsman, alarmed by the noise, hastened to the spot, saw a
child coming out of the tower and the cannon deserted. It was thought
that the hand of an innocent child had fired the bullet by the
permission of the Mother of God, who had been irritated by the Earl of
Salisbury's despoiling monks and pillaging the Church of Notre Dame de
Clery. It was said also that he was punished for having broken his
oath, for he had promised the Duke of Orleans to respect his lands and
his towns. Borne secretly to Meung-sur-Loire, he died there on
Wednesday the 27th of October; and the English were very
sorrowful.[517] Most of them felt that loss to be irreparable which
had deprived them of a chief who was conducting the siege vigorously,
and who in less than twelve days had captured Les Tourelles, the very
corner-stone of the city's defence. But there were others who
reflected that he must have been very simple to imagine that thick
ramparts could be overthrown by stone balls, the force of which had
already been spent in crossing the wide stretches of the river, and
that he must have been mad to attempt to storm a city which could only
be reduced by famine. Then they thought: "He is dead. God receive his
soul! But he has brought us into a sorry plight."

[Footnote 517: _Journal du siege_, pp. 10, 12. _Chronique de la
Pucelle_, p. 264. Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 298. Jean Chartier,
_Chronique_, vol. i, p. 63. _Mistere d'Orleans_, line 3104 _et seq._
_Chronique de la fete_ in _Trial_, vol. v, p. 288. Morosini, vol. iii,
p. 131. Lorenzo Buonincontro in Muratori, _Rerum Italicarum
Scriptores_, vol. xxi, col. 136. Jarry, _Le compte de l'armee
anglaise_, pp. 85, 86.]

Men told how Maitre Jean de Builhons, a famous astrologer, had
prophesied this death,[518] and how in the night before the fatal
day, the Earl of Salisbury himself had dreamed that he was being
clawed by a wolf. A Norman clerk