WARS and BATTLES
From Ancient Greece - to modern day.

The city of Orleans itself was on the north side of the Loire, but its suburbs extended far on the southern side, and a strong bridge connected them with the town. A fortification, which in modern military phrase would be termed a tete-du-pont, defended the bridge head on the southern side, and two towers, called the Tourelles, were built on the bridge itself, at a little distance from the tete-du-pont. Indeed, the solid masonry of the bridge terminated at the Tourelles; and the communication thence with the tete-du-pont and the southern shore was by means of a drawbridge. The Tourelles and the tete-du-pont formed together a strong fortified post, capable of containing a garrison of considerable strength and so long as this was in possession of the Orleannais, they could communicate freely with the southern provinces, the inhabitants' of which, like the Orleannais themselves, supported the cause of their dauphin against the foreigners.

Lord Salisbury rightly judged the capture of the Tourelles to be the most material step toward the reduction of the city itself. Accordingly, he directed his principal operations against this post, and after some severe repulses, he carried the Tourelles by storm on the 23d of October. The French, however, broke down the arches of the bridge that were nearest to the north bank, and thus rendered a direct assault from the Tourelles upon the city impossible. But the possession Of this post enabled the English to distress the town greatly by a battery of cannon which they planted there, and which commanded some of the principal streets.
  
It has been observed by Hume that this is the first siege in which any important use appears 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 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, in 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 success 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 work 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 entrenchments, 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 Fastolfe, one of the best English generals, gained at Eouvrai, 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, Fastolfe 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, though the ally of the English, was yet one of their native princes. The Regent Bedford refused these terms, and the speedy submission of the city to the English seemed inevitable. 

The Dauphin Charles, who was now at Chinon with his remnant of a court despaired of continuing any longer the struggle for his crown, and was only prevented from abandoning the country by the more masculine spirits of his mistress and his queen. Yet neither they nor the boldest of Charles's captains, could have shown him where to find resources for prolonging the war and least of all could any human skill have predicted the quarter whence rescue was to come to Orleans and to France.