The joy of the besieged was short.  Charles of Blois pressed on the siege more rigorously every day, threatening that, when he should have taken the place, he would put all the inhabitants to the sword.  Consternation spread even to the brave; and a negotiation was opened with a view of arriving at terms of capitulation.  By dint of prayers Countess Joan obtained a delay of three days.  The first two had expired, and the besiegers were preparing for a fresh assault, when Joan, from the top of her tower, saw the sea covered with sails:  “‘See, see,’ she cried, the aid so much desired!’ Every one in the town, as best they could, rushed up at once to the windows and battlements of the walls to see what it might be,” says Froissart.  In point of fact it was a fleet with six thousand men brought from England to the relief of Hennebon by Amaury de Clisson and Walter de Manny; and they had been a long while detained at sea by contrary winds.”

[Illustration:  ‘See!  See!’ she cried——­283]

When they had landed the countess herself went to them and feasted them and thanked them greatly, which was no wonder, for she had sore need of their coming.”  It was far better still when, next day, the new arrivals had attacked the besiegers and gained a brilliant victory over them.  When they re-entered the place, “whoever,” says Froissart, “saw the countess descend from the castle, and kiss my lord Walter de Manny and his comrades, one after another, two or three times, might well have said that it was a gallant dame.”

All the while that the Count of Montfort was a prisoner in the tower of the Louvre, the countess his wife strove for his cause with the same indefatigable energy.  He escaped in 1345, crossed over to England, swore fealty and homage to Edward III. for the duchy of Brittany, and immediately returned to take in hand, himself, his own cause.  But in the very year of his escape, on the 26th of September, 1345, he died at the castle of Hennebon, leaving once more his wife, with a young child, alone at the head of his party and having in charge the future of his house.  The Countess Joan maintained the rights and interests of her son as she had maintained those of her husband.  For nineteen years, she, with the help of England, struggled against Charles of Blois, the head of a party growing more and more powerful, and protected by France.  Fortune shifted her favors and her asperities from one camp to the other.  Charles of Blois had at first pretty considerable success; but on the 18th of June, 1347, in a battle in which he personally displayed a brilliant courage, he was in his turn made prisoner, carried to England, and immured in the Tower of London.  There he remained nine years.  But he too had a valiant and indomitable wife, Joan of Penthievre, the Cripple.  She did for her husband all that Joan of Montfort was doing for hers.  All the time that he was a prisoner in the Tower of London, she was the soul and the head of his party,