On the morrow morning, the 28th, came the lieutenant-general, attended by the counts de St Pol and d'Eu, the lord seneschal of Poitou, and several other captains, with a large body of franc archers, (an institution lately established in France) attacked, and instantly gained possession of a small island, on which they raised a battery of cannon, although they did not fire them, but some sharp skirmishings took place between the archers,--and the English lost the bridge, when their governor was pierced through both his cheeks with an arrow, to their great dismay. Seeing, therefore, the great force that was brought against them, and that numbers of towns and castles had of late surrendered, they, in conjunction with the inhabitants, demanded from the count de Dunois passports for four or six persons to hold a parley respecting the summons that had been sent them. This was agreed to; and the following persons were selected by the governor and inhabitants to wait on the count de Dunois, namely, John Abaron[12], an Englishman, captain of the troops in the town, master Guillaume d'Aguenet, a most determined partisan of the English, Regnault de Bordeaux and others,--and d'Aguenet was appointed spokesman. Having made the usual salutations to the lieutenant-general, he thus addressed him,--'My lord, you have summoned us to surrender the town of Vernon to the king your lord: tell us on what grounds you have made this demand.' The count de Dunois, with coolness and dignity becoming the representative of a king, answered most eloquently, (for he was one of the most eloquent men in all France) that the said town of Vernon, and its dependances, belonged to the king his lord by rightful inheritance; that it had been taken from him more by violence than otherwise, with great part of his kingdom, during the life of the late king his father; and he then recited, in a style that would have done credit to a doctor, a history of the war between the kings of France and England, and the innumerable evils that had resulted from it: that the king of France, moved by his great charity, had consented to certain truces, in the hope that, during their continuance, means might be found to establish a permanent peace,--but that the English had, through their disorderly love of conquest, in the interval, gained by force the town of Fougeres from the duke of Brittany, a relative and subject of the king, and especially named in the said truces. He then related all the conferences that had taken place on the occasion, and their result, which have been already mentioned.