ears to have been made of artillery. And even at
Orleans both besiegers and besieged seem to have employed their cannons
merely as instruments of destruction against their enemy's _men_, and
not to have trusted to them as engines of demolition against their
enemy's walls and works. The efficacy of cannon in breaching solid
masonry was taught Europe by the Turks a few years afterward, at the
memorable siege of Constantinople.

In our French wars, as in the wars of the classic nations, famine was
looked on as the surest weapon to compel the submission of a well-walled
town; and the great object of the besiegers was to effect a complete
circumvallation. The great ambit of the walls of Orleans, and the
facilities which the river gave for obtaining succors and supplies,
rendered the capture of the town by this process a matter of great
difficulty. Nevertheless, Lord Salisbury, and Lord Suffolk, who
succeeded him in command of the English after his death by a
cannon-ball, carried on the necessary works with great skill and
resolution. Six strongly-fortified posts, called _bastilles_, were
formed at certain intervals round the town, and the purpose of the
English engineers was to draw strong lines between them. During the
winter, little progress was made with the intrenchments, but when the
spring of 1429 came, the English resumed their work with activity; the
communications between the city and the country became more difficult,
and the approach of want began already to be felt in Orleans.

The besieging force also fared hardly for stores and provisions, until
relieved by the effects of a brilliant victory which Sir John Fastolf,
one of the best English generals, gained at Rouvrai, near Orleans, a few
days after Ash Wednesday, 1429. With only sixteen hundred fighting men,
Sir John completely defeated an army of French and Scots, four thousand
strong, which had been collected for the purpose of aiding the
Orleannais and harassing the besiegers. After this encounter, which
seemed decisively to confirm the superiority of the English in battle
over their adversaries, Fastolf escorted large supplies of stores and
food to Suffolk's camp, and the spirits of the English rose to the
highest pitch at the prospect of the speedy capture of the city before
them, and the consequent subjection of all France beneath their arms.

The Orleannais now, in their distress, offered to surrender the city
into the hands of the Duke of Burgundy, who