Having provided for what was most pressing, namely the organization of his force, he had two onagri placed in the outwork the day following the engagements, and these onagri began to hurl stones of sixty pounds weight on the Frank workmen engaged in the contravallation, two hundred paces from the salient, with such effect that the besiegers were forced to put back their fosse fifty paces out of range. The following night, Clodoald sent out a thousand men by the eastern gate, who, defiling by the road along the rampart, went and destroyed the first works of the Franks, and re-entered immediately; at the same time another sortie, effected through the south gate of the great tête de pont, surprised several men of the Frankish outposts. Their heads, fixed on stakes, were placed at the extremity of the northern outwork, as a response to the proceedings of the Franks. That very night, the enemy attempted to cross the river, aided by the islet of sand, in order to attack the ramping curtain on the north from behind; but they were unable to land, the quays being well lined with troops. Many of them were drowned.
Things were proceeding rather unfavourably for the army of the Frank kings; it was accompanied, however, by an able Latin engineer, who had given proofs of his skill, especially at the siege of Autun. Childebert, exasperated by the success of the besieged, poured forth menaces against his own men as well as the enemy. He had not deigned to listen to the advice of his engineer, who since the arrival of the army before Juliana had been urging him to encamp on the north, and not to invest the town till he had reconnoitred its approaches. Consulted after the preliminary checks, Secondinus—that was the name of the Latin engineer—admitted that it was difficult to withdraw, since the army was engaged around the place; that the first thing to be done was to make it impossible for the besieged to make a sortie; and to effect this result—the latter being unable to issue without danger except by the eastern gate, and the têtes de pont—it was necessary to raise works in front of these points of egress, so as to close them completely; that it was hazardous and of little advantage to try to seize the great tête de pont by a direct attack; but that it was necessary to occupy the western quarter below the ramparts, and therefore to cross the river; that then, by the same blow, the têtes de pont and the ramping wall on the north would be lost to the besieged, and the southern place d'armes endangered.
Thereupon, trees were felled in the forest on the plateau, and the timberwork of the houses of the lower town brought away. A moat, filled from the river, surrounded the works of the great tête de pont; but those of the smaller one no longer possessed any; the fosse had long been filled up, and the besieged had neglected to sink it afresh. The south wall of the Emporium, which joined the northern shoulder of that smaller tête de pont, was crenelated, and in the hands of the defenders, including the square return on the road coming from the west. Thus half the area of the Emporium was commanded in its length by this wall.[See [Fig. 16].] Astride on this western road, Secondinus erected an agger which rested against the river, fifty paces from the square return, and on this agger he fixed up a work of framed timber, which commanded the enemy's rampart ([Fig. 21]). Around the great tête de pont, he contented himself with raising a contravallation, which cut off the two roads. Before the eastern gate of the city, the operation presented great difficulties, because of the steepness of the slope of the plateau. Every night, the besiegers' works were thrown down by the defenders, who had the advantage of the dominant position. Secondinus, after several unsuccessful attempts, was obliged to confine himself to forming beneath the ascent of the plateau a work of earth and timber, forming an arc of a circle, as in the accompanying sketch ([Fig. 22]).
The besiegers could reach this work, which was out of range of the plateau, by a road descending gently towards the western arm of the rivulet.
These works had not been executed without attempts on the part of the besieged to destroy them, nor without considerable loss on the part of the Franks. A fortnight, however, after the enemy's arrival, they were completed, and strongly guarded.
Fig. 21.
The enemy's troops were thus disposed around the cité:—The large encampment on the north plateau was occupied by twelve thousand men; the defenders of the great contravallation on the same side numbered two thousand. The body lodged in the lower town consisted of six thousand men; the guard of the work opposite the small tête de pont, five hundred; that of the contravallation around the great tête de pont, one thousand two hundred; the work raised at the bottom of the plateau facing the east gate contained one thousand two hundred men. Total: twenty-two thousand nine hundred men. There remained, deducting for losses since the commencement of the siege, about ten thousand soldiers, who scoured and devastated the country, collected provisions and forage, and formed a reserve corps, ready to make a fresh attempt when the propitious moment arrived.
