278.] What was to become of Orleans?
The siege, badly conducted, was causing the English the most grievous disappointments.

Further, their captains perceived they would never succeed in taking the town by means of those bastions, between which anything, either men, victuals, or ammunition, could pass, and with an army miserably quartered in mud hovels, ravaged by disease, and reduced by desertions to three thousand, or at the most to three thousand two hundred men.

They had lost nearly all their horses.

Far from being able to continue the attack it was hard for them to maintain the defensive and to hold out in those miserable wooden towers, which, as Le Jouvencel said, were more profitable to the besieged than to the besiegers.[872] [Footnote 872: _Le Jouvencel_, vol.ii, p.

44.] Their only hope, and that an uncertain and distant one, lay in the reinforcements, which the Regent was gathering with great difficulty.[873] Meanwhile, time seemed to drag in the besieged town.
The warriors who defended it were brave, but they had come to the end of their resources and knew not what more to do.