In that same year, 1428, Captains La Hire and Poton had failed in their assault on Le Mans and decamped just in time.

The citizens who had aided them were beheaded in the square du Cloitre-Saint-Julien, on the Olet stone, by order of William Pole, Earl of Suffolk, who had already arrived at Olivet, and of John Talbot, the most courteous of English knights, who was shortly to come there too.[490] Such an example was sufficient to warn the people of Orleans.
[Footnote 490: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, pp.

225, 226.

_Geste des nobles_, p.202._Chronique de la Pucelle_, p.251.Jean Chartier, _Chronique_, vol.i, p.59.Jarry, _Le compte de l'armee anglaise_, pp.

107, 112.] Notwithstanding that it was under the control of the Governor, the town administered its own affairs by means of twelve magistrates elected for two years by the citizens, subject to the governor's approbation.[491] These magistrates risked more than the other citizens.