Soon after the capture of Therouenne, we were besieged in Hesdin.  There was a clear stream of running water within shot of our cannon, and about it were fourscore or an hundred of the enemy’s rabble, drawing water.  I was on a rampart watching the enemy pitch their camp; and, seeing the crowd of idlers round the stream, I asked M. du Pont, commissary of the artillery, to send one cannon-shot among this canaille:  he gave me a flat refusal, saying that all this sort of people was not worth the powder would be wasted on them.  Again I begged him to level the cannon, telling him, “The more dead, the fewer enemies;” which he did for my sake:  and the shot killed fifteen or sixteen, and wounded many.  Our men made sorties against the enemy, wherein many were killed and wounded on both sides, with gunshot or with fighting hand to hand; and our men often sallied out before their trenches were made; so that I had my work cut out for me, and had no rest either day or night for dressing the wounded.

And here I would note that we had put many of them in a great tower, laying them on a little straw:  and their pillows were stones, their coverlets were cloaks, those who had any.  When the attack was made, so often as the enemy’s cannons were fired, our wounded said they felt pain in their wounds, as if you had struck them with a stick:  one was crying out on his head, the other on his arm, and so with the other parts of the body:  and many had their wounds bleed again, even more profusely than at the time they were wounded, and then I had to run to staunch them.  Mon petit maistre, if you had been there, you would have been much hindered with your hot irons; you would have wanted a lot of charcoal to heat them red, and sure you would have been killed like a calf for your cruelty.  Many died of the diabolical storm of the echo of these engines of artillery, and the vehement agitation and severe shock of the air acting on their wounds; others because they got no rest for the shouting and crying that were made day and night, and for want of good food, and other things needful for their treatment.  Mon petit maistre, if you had been there, no doubt you could have given them jelly, restoratives, gravies, pressed meats, broth, barley-water, almond-milk, blanc-mange, prunes, plums, and other food proper for the sick; but your diet would have been only on paper, and in fact they had nothing but beef of old shrunk cows, seized round Hesdin for our provision, salted and half-cooked, so that he who would eat it must drag at it with his teeth, as birds of prey tear their food.  Nor must I forget the linen for dressing their wounds, which was only washed daily and dried at the fire, till it was as hard as parchment:  I leave you to think how their wounds could do well.  There were four big fat rascally women who had charge to whiten the linen, and were kept at it with the stick; and yet they had not water enough to do it, much less soap.  That is how the poor patients died, for want of food and other necessary things.