So the days went on, and darkened towards the promised season of Martinmas, but there dawned no light of hope.  Now, on the Wednesday before All Saints, I had clambered up into the tower of the Church of the Jacobins, on the north-east of the city, whence there was a prospect far and wide.  With me were only two of the youngest of the fathers.  I looked down into the great forest of Pierrefonds, and up and down Oise, and beheld the army of our enemies moving in divers ways.  The banners of the English and their long array were crossing the Duke of Burgundy’s new bridge of wood, that he had builded from Venette, and with them the men of Jean de Luxembourg trooped towards Royaulieu.  On the crest of their bastille, over against our Pierrefonds Gate, matches were lighted and men were watching in double guard, and the same on the other side of the water, at the Gate Margny.  Plainly our foes expected a rescue sent to us of Compiegne by our party.  But the forest, five hundred yards from our wall, lay silent and peaceable, a sea of brown and yellow leaves.

Then, while the English and Burgundian men-at-arms, that had marched south and east, were drawn up in order of battle away to the right between wood and water, behold, trumpets sounded, faint enough, being far off.  Then there was a glitter of the pale sun on long lines of lance-points, under the banners of French captains, issuing out from the forest, over against the enemy.  We who stood on the tower gazed long at these two armies, which were marshalled orderly, with no more than a bowshot and a half between them, and every moment we looked to see them charge upon each other with the lance.  Much we prayed to the Saints, for now all our hope was on this one cast.  They of Burgundy and of England dismounted from their horses, for the English ever fight best on foot, and they deemed that the knights of France would ride in upon them, and fall beneath the English bows, as at Azincour and Crecy.  We, too, looked for nought else; but the French array never stirred, though here and there a knight would gallop forth to do a valiance.  Seldom has man seen a stranger sight in war, for the English and Burgundians could not charge, being heavy-armed men on foot, and the French would not move against them, we knew not wherefore.

All this spectacle lay far off, to the south, and we could not be satisfied with wondering at it nor turn away our eyes, when, on the left, a trumpet rang out joyously.  Then, all of us wheeling round as one man, we saw the most blessed sight, whereto our backs had been turned; for, into the Chapel Gate—­that is, far to the left of the Pierrefonds Gate on the north-east—­were streaming cattle, sheep and kine, pricked on and hastened by a company of a hundred men-at-arms.  They had come by forest paths from Choisy way, and anon all our guns on the boulevard of the Pierrefonds Gate burst forth at once against the English bastille over against it.  Now this bastille, as I have said, had never been strongly builded, and, in some sort, was not wholly finished.