12. All that is essential concerning
her personality and life prior to the great achievement
recorded here will be found in Creasy's own introduction to
his spirited account of the victory at Orleans.

Orleans was looked upon as the last stronghold of the French national
party. If the English could once obtain possession of it, their
victorious progress through the residue of the kingdom seemed free from
any serious obstacle. Accordingly, the Earl of Salisbury, one of the
bravest and most experienced of the English generals, who had been
trained under Henry V, marched to the attack of the all-important city;
and, after reducing several places of inferior consequence in the
neighborhood, appeared with his army before its walls on the 12th of
October, 1428.

The city of Orleans itself was on the north side of the Loire, but its
suburbs extended far on the southern side, and a strong bridge connected
them with the town. A fortification, which in modern military phrase
would be termed a _tete-du-pont_, defended the bridge head on the
southern side, and two towers, called the _Tourelles_, were built on the
bridge itself, at a little distance from the tete-du-pont. Indeed, the
solid masonry of the bridge terminated at the Tourelles; and the
communication thence with the tete-du-pont and the southern shore was by
means of a drawbridge. The Tourelles and the tete-du-pont formed
together a strong-fortified post, capable of containing a garrison of
considerable strength; and so long as this was in possession of the
Orleannais, they could communicate freely with the southern provinces,
the inhabitants of which, like the Orleannais themselves, supported the
cause of their dauphin against the foreigners.

Lord Salisbury rightly judged the capture of the Tourelles to be the
most material step toward the reduction of the city itself. Accordingly,
he directed his principal operations against this post, and after some
severe repulses he carried the Tourelles by storm on the 23d of October.
The French, however, broke down the arches of the bridge that were
nearest to the north bank, and thus rendered a direct assault from the
Tourelles upon the city impossible. But the possession of this post
enabled the English to distress the town greatly by a battery of cannon
which they planted there, and which commanded some of the principal
streets.

It has been observed by Hume that this is the first siege in which any
important use app