nce, and of Normandy
could furnish them with no great store of sheep or oxen. Their food
was bad, their drink worse. The vintage of 1427 had been bad, that of
the following year was poor and weak--more like sour grapes than
wine.[847] Now an old English author has written of the soldiers of
his country:

"They want their porridge and their fat bull-beeves:
Either they must be dieted like mules
And have their provender tied to their mouths
Or piteous they will look, like drowned mice."[848]

[Footnote 847: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, pp. 221, 222 _et
seq._]

[Footnote 848: Shakespeare, _Henry VI_, part i, act i, scene ii.
According to M. G. Duval the first part of this play was adapted from
one of Shakespeare's predecessors.]

A sudden humiliation still further weakened the English. Captain Poton
de Saintrailles and the two magistrates, Guyon du Fosse and Jean de
Saint-Avy, who had gone on an embassy to the Duke of Burgundy,
returned to Orleans on the 17th of April. The Duke had granted their
request and consented to take the town under his protection. But the
Regent, to whom the offer had been made, would not have it thus.

He replied that he would be very sorry if after he had beaten the bush
another should go off with the nestlings.[849] Therefore the offer was
rejected. Nevertheless the embassy had been by no means useless, and
it was something to have raised a new cause of quarrel between the
Duke and the Regent. The ambassadors returned accompanied by a
Burgundian herald who blew his trumpet in the English camp, and, in
the name of his master, commanded all combatants who owed allegiance
to the Duke to raise the siege. Some hundreds of archers and
men-at-arms, Burgundians, men of Picardy and of Champagne, departed
forthwith.[850]

[Footnote 849: Jean Chartier, _Chronique_, vol. i, p. 65.]

[Footnote 850: _Journal du siege_, pp. 69, 70. _Chronique de la
Pucelle_, p. 270. Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 317 _et seq._ Morosini,
vol. iii, pp. 19, 20, 21; vol. iv, supplement xiv, p. 311. Jarry, _Le
compte de l'armee anglaise_, pp. 68 _et seq._ Boucher de Molandon,
_L'armee anglaise vaincue par Jeanne d'Arc_, p. 145.]

On the next day, at four o'clock in the morning, the citizens
emboldened and deeming the opportunity a good one, attacked the camp
of Saint-Laurent-des-Orgerils. They slew the watch and entered the
camp, where they found piles of money, robes of martin, and a goodly
store of wea