Henry made no assault upon the town. He was too careful of the lives of his men to waste them in so perilous an enterprise. He contented himself with repelling the frequent sallies of the besieged, which the strength of his lines of circumvallation and the state of readiness in which he always kept his troops enabled him to do without serious loss. He kept his men employed indeed with the construction of siege works, with the driving of mines, and with the construction of systematic approaches to the town; but his chief reliance was a blockade. The vast population, military and civil, ordinary and extraordinary, that crowded the walls of Rouen could not be long fed on any stores that had been laid up in this place, while effectual measures had been taken against the throwing in of any relief. The first-fruits of this policy of starvation were seen in the surrender of the fortified post of the Abbey of St. Catherine. This was given up by the force that garrisoned it within a month of the investment of the city, and given up because provisions had failed. Henry’s own camp meanwhile was abundantly supplied with provisions, furnished by stores of his own, or brought in by the parties which ravaged the neighbouring country. Rouen soon began to feel the pressure of famine. Its governor made an attempt to relieve it by expelling from the town twelve thousand non-combatants. Henry refused to let these miserable creatures pass through his lines, and they perished by degrees under the walls. The story of their fate is pitiable in the extreme. Some of them lingered on till the very end of the siege. Many of the soldiers on either side had hearts more tender, or perhaps it should be said intelligences less alive to the necessities of the military situation, than the generals who directed the attack and the defence of Rouen. These secretly supplied the outcasts with such provisions as they could spare. Henry himself departed from the severity of his policy by furnishing the few who were left alive on Christmas Day with a meal. But neither the Governor nor the King relented. It may be mentioned as an incident eminently characteristic of the time, that new-born children were raised in baskets to the top of the walls, duly baptized, and then let down again to perish of hunger.