Du Tillet, _Recueil des traites_, p.

221.] Pending the uncertain and distant day when they might be thus protected, the people of Orleans continued to protect themselves as best they could.

But they were anxious and not without reason.

For although they might prevent the enemy from entering within the city, they could devise no means for speedily driving him away.

In the early days of March they observed with concern that the English were digging a ditch to serve them as cover in passing from one bastion to another, from la Croix-Boissee to Saint-Ladre.