round the place or whilst roving in misery over the neighboring country; “poor women gave birth unassisted beneath the walls, and good compassionate people in the town drew up the new-born in baskets to have them baptized, and afterwards lowered them down to their mothers to die together.”  Fifteen thousand men of city-militia, four thousand regular soldiers, three hundred spearmen and as many archers from Paris, and it is not quite known how many men-at-arms sent by the Duke of Burgundy, defended Rouen for more than five months amidst all the usual sufferings of strictly-besieged cities.  “As early as the beginning of October,” says Monstrelet, “they were forced to eat horses, dogs, cats, and other things not fit for human beings;” but they nevertheless made frequent sorties, “rushing furiously upon the enemy, to whom they caused many a heavy loss.”  Four gentlemen and four burgesses succeeded in escaping and going to Beauvais, to tell the king and his council about the deplorable condition of their city.  The council replied that the king was not in a condition to raise the siege, but that Rouen would be relieved “within” on the fourth day after Christmas.  It was now the middle of December.  The Rouennese resigned themselves to waiting a fortnight longer; but, when that period was over, they found nothing arrive but a message from the Duke of Burgundy recommending them “to treat for their preservation with the King of England as best they could.”  They asked to capitulate.  Henry V. demanded that “all the men of the town should place themselves at his disposal.”  “When the commonalty of Rouen heard this answer, they all cried out that it were better to die all together sword in hand against their enemies than place themselves at the disposal of yonder king, and they were for shoring up with planks a loosened layer of the wall inside the city, and, having armed themselves and joined all of them together, men, women, and children, for setting fire to the city, throwing down the said layer of wall into the moats, and getting them gone by night whither it might please God to direct them.”  Henry V. was unwilling to confront such heroic despair; and on the 13th of January, 1419, he granted the Rouennese a capitulation, from which seven persons only were excepted, Robert Delivet, the archbishop’s vicar-general, who from the top of the ramparts had excommunicated the foreign conqueror; D’Houdetot, baillie of the city; John Segneult, the mayor; Alan Blanchard, the captain of the militia-crossbowmen, and three other burgesses.  The last-named, the hero of the siege, was the only one who paid for his heroism with his life; the baillie, the mayor, and the vicar bought themselves off.  On the 19th of January, at midday, the English, king and army, made their solemn entry into the city.  It was two hundred and fifteen years since Philip Augustus had won Rouen by conquest from John Lackland, King of England; and happily his successors were not to be condemned to deplore the loss of it very long.