298.) Edward III., weary of thus roaming with his army over France without obtaining any decisive result, and without even managing to get into his hands any one "of the good towns which he had promised himself," says Froissart, "that he would tan and hide in such sort that they would be glad to come to some accord with him," resolved to direct his efforts against the capital of the kingdom, where the dauphin kept himself close.
On the 7th of April, 1360, he arrived hard by Montrouge, and his troops spread themselves over the outskirts of Paris in the form of an investing or besieging force.

But he had to do with a city protected by good ramparts, and well supplied with provisions, and with a prince cool, patient, determined, free from any illusion as to his danger or his strength, and resolved not to risk any of those great battles of which he had experienced the sad issue.

Foreseeing the advance of the English, he had burned the villages in the neighborhood of Paris, where they might have fixed their quarters; he did the same with the suburbs of St.
Germain, St.Marcel, and Notre-Dame-des-Champs; he turned a deaf ear to all King Edward's warlike challenges; and some attempts at an assault on the part of the English knights, and some sorties on the part of the French knights, impatient of their inactivity, came to nothing.

At the end of a week Edward, whose "army no longer found aught to eat," withdrew from Paris by the Chartres road, declaring his purpose of entering the good country of Beauce, where he would recruit himself all the summer," and whence he would return after vintage to resume the siege of Paris, whilst his lieutenants would ravage all the neighboring provinces.

When he was approaching Chartres, "there burst upon his army," says Froissart, "a tempest, a storm, an eclipse, a wind, a hail, an upheaval so mighty, so wondrous, so horrible, that it seemed as if the heaven were all a-tumble, and the earth were opening to swallow up everything; the stones fell so thick and so big that they slew men and horses, and there was none so bold but that they were all dismayed.