h of these ill planned and useless assaults cost them many men. And
they already lacked both soldiers and horses.

[Footnote 544: 4-27 Jan. _Journal du siege_, pp. 21, 22, 30.]

Neither had they succeeded in alarming the people of Orleans by their
double bombardment on the south and on the west. There was a joke in
the town that a great cannon-ball had fallen near La Porte Banniere
into the midst of a crowd of a hundred people without touching one,
except a fellow who had his shoe taken off by it, but suffered no
further hurt than having to put it on again.[545]

[Footnote 545: 17 Jan. _Ibid._, p. 26.]

Meanwhile the French, English, and Burgundian knights took delight in
performing valiant deeds of prowess. Whenever the whim took them, and
under the slightest protest, they sallied forth into the country, but
always with the object of capturing some booty, for they thought of
little else. One day, for instance, towards the end of January, when
it was bitterly cold, a little band of English marauders entered the
vineyards of Saint-Ladre and Saint-Jean-de-la-Ruelle to gather sticks
for firewood. The watchman no sooner announces them than behold all
the banners flying to the wind. Marshal de Boussac, Messire Jacques de
Chabannes, Seneschal of Bourbonnais, Messire Denis de Chailly, and
many another baron, and with them captains and free-lances, make forth
into the fields. Not one of them can have commanded as many as twenty
men.[546]

[Footnote 546: _Ibid._, p. 32.]

The King's council was making every effort to succour Orleans. The
King summoned the nobles of Auvergne. They had been true to the Lilies
ever since the day when the Dauphin, Canon of Notre-Dame-d'Ancis, and
barely more than a child, had travelled over wild peaks to subdue two
or three rebellious barons.[547] At the royal call the nobles of
Auvergne came forth from their mountains. Beneath the standard of the
Count of Clermont, in the early days of February, they reached Blois,
where they joined the Scottish force of John Stuart of Darnley, the
Constable of Scotland, and a company from Bourbonnais, under the
command of the barons La Tour-d'Auvergne and De Thouars.[548]

[Footnote 547: _Gallia Christiana_, vol. ii, p. 732. Vallet de
Viriville, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. i, p. 213; vol. ii, p. 6,
note 2. S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, p. ccxcv.]

[Footnote 548: _Journal du siege_, pp. 21, 36-38. The accounts of
Hemon Raguier, Bibl. Nat. Fr. 7858