Now, in the autumn of 1428, all eyes were turned on the city, and on the ring of "bastilles" (palisaded earthworks) surrounding it, commanding every approach. In these bastilles and in the camps stretching beyond them on every side, the English commanders were gathered: Salisbury, Suffolk, Talbot, Scales, Fastolf. Inside the city walls were Dunois, La Hire, Xaintrailles, La Fayette--beside these the citizens fought with desperate courage. On both sides captains and soldiers girded themselves for a struggle which all felt must be a decisive one. Assault on one side, sortie on the other, began and continued briskly. Salisbury with his curious copper cannon (throwing stone balls of one hundred and fifty pounds' weight a distance of seven hundred yards) battered the walls and rained shot into the city: the besieged replied with boiling oil, lime, and the like, with which the women of Orleans kept them supplied. The fight raged with greatest violence round the Tourelles, which English and French were equally determined to take and to keep. After being battered almost to pieces, it was finally captured by the besiegers, but at terrible cost. On the eighth day of the siege (October) Salisbury, standing by an embrasure in one of its towers, was struck on the head by a stone ball from a French cannon, and died soon after. This was a heavy loss to the English. On the other hand, Sir John Fastolf, convoying provisions for the English, completely routed a party of French, who sallied out to intercept him. Lent was near, and prudent Sir John had procured a large supply of salt herrings; these, scattered over the field in every direction, gave the skirmish its name, the Battle of the Herrings. Most of the provender was brought safely into camp, rejoicing greatly the hearts of the English. But the city managed to get victualed too. One day six hundred pigs were driven in, spite of cannon and mortar; another day two hundred, and forty beeves; but the day after they lost five hundred head of cattle and "the famous light field-piece of that master gunner, Jean the Lorrainer."[20] A merry wag, this John of Lorraine: his jests flew as fast as his balls. Now and then he would drop beside his gun, and be carried off apparently dead. Shouts of joy would go up from the English: in the midst of which, John would "bob up serenely" bowing and smiling, and would go to work again. So, back and forth, the tide ebbed and flowed, while the winter dragged on. A leisurely, almost a cheerful siege; Andrew Lang thinks the fighting was "not much more serious than the combats with apples and cheeses, in the pleasant land of Torelore, as described in the old romance of _Aucassin and Nicolete_."[21] He quotes the Monk of Dunfermline, "a mysterious Scots chronicler,"[21] as saying that the English camp was like a great fair, with booths for the sale of all sorts of commodities, and with sunk ways leading from one fort to another.