On the other hand, every day found the position of the besieged becoming more and more desperate; and it was not long ere famine began to stalk through the congested streets of Rouen.
Thereupon the governor of the town resolved upon a desperate and pitiless expedient. Gathering together nearly fifteen thousand of the non-belligerents, he ordered them to leave the city.
As the last of the multitude issued from beneath the battlements the gates were shut. Thinking that they would be granted safe conduct through the English lines the miserable wretches advanced, forgetting their plight in their expectations of being able to find food in the open country beyond the entrenchments that encircled the town.
But to their consternation Henry refused to allow any of the refugees to pass. Probably he thought that by so doing the Governor of Rouen would be compelled to re-admit them, and thus hasten the fall of the city through famine. On the other hand the Governor was of opinion that Henry would relent and allow the non-combatants to pass.
Neither King nor Governor would give way, and in consequence the fifteen thousand helpless wretches were cooped up betwixt two fires, subsisting on roots, and on the very scanty supplies with which the English soldiers, at great risk, secretly supplied them, in spite of the King's orders.
Some succeeded in stealing through the invaders' lines. Hundreds fell by the hands of their own countrymen in attempting to force their way back into the town, while, save for a very few, the rest perished miserably of hunger.
Henry's action can only be described as barbarous. Coupled with the massacre of prisoners at Agincourt it forms a blot upon his reputation, and in this case there was no such imperative necessity—those non-combatants could have done him no harm.
Fortunately the Hampshire Companies were posted on the riverside, and in consequence Geoffrey and his companions were spared the horrors of the scenes that followed, though they heard with feelings of shame, and compassion of the barbarity practised upon the luckless folk.
Slowly the siege wore on. No attempt was made to sally from the city, nor was there any on the part of the Dauphin to relieve the capital of Normandy, and thus the blockade, though rigidly enforced, became so tedious and irksome to the besiegers that they longed for something to occur that might rouse them into activity.
One day in September, Sir Oliver Lysle and Sir Thomas Carberry had ridden to another part of the English lines to confer with Sir Brocas Scorton concerning the providing of a fresh supply of hurdles for the entrenchments.