Absorbed in pillage, they paid no heed to defending themselves and were surprised by the enemy, who in great force had hastened to the place.

They fled pursued by the English who slew many.
On that day the town resounded with the lamentations of women weeping for a father, a husband, a brother, kinsmen.[851] [Footnote 851: _Journal du siege_, p.

70.] Within those walls, in a space where there was room for not more than fifteen thousand inhabitants, forty thousand[852] were huddled together, one vast multitude agonised by all manner of suffering; depressed by domestic sorrow; racked with anxiety; maddened by constant danger and perpetual panic.

Although the wars of those days were not so sanguinary as they became later, the sallies of the inhabitants of Orleans were the occasion of constant and considerable loss of life.

Since the middle of March the English bullets had fallen more into the centre of the town; and they were not always harmless.
On the eve of Palm Sunday one stone, fired from a mortar, killed or wounded five persons; another, seven.[853] Many of the inhabitants, like the provost, Alain Du Bey, died of fatigue or of the infected air.[854] [Footnote 852: Jollois, _Histoire du siege_, part vi, ch.i.