The reverses which the French monarch suffered in Guienne had been thus compensated by Edward’s loss of his Flemish ally, and, at the same time, by the death of John de Montfort. That prince, after his escape from the Louvre, had led succours from England to Brittany, but was able to do little towards changing the aspect of affairs or the relative position of parties, when he died at Hennebon. All the efforts of Philip were directed towards repelling Lord Derby. The French king assembled his estates in the north and in the south, but more to appease discontent than to command succour or adhesion: he merely proposed continuing his present levies of money, on the understanding that they were to cease at the peace. An army was collected and sent, under the duke of Normandy, to the south. He recovered Angoulême, and laid siege to Aiguillon, an important fortress not far from Agen; but Sir Walter Manny and Lord Pembroke were within the walls, and infused such spirit into the garrison that during four months it defied the duke of Normandy and his army, said to number one hundred thousand men. The obstinacy of the siege as well as the defence induced the English king to march to the succour of his general, for Lord Derby at Bordeaux had no force sufficient to encounter the duke of Normandy. An expedition was fitted out, at Southampton, consisting of four thousand men-at-arms and ten thousand archers, besides the Irish and Welsh.[b] The English fleet set sail for the mouth of the Gironde, where a tempest hurled it back into the Channel. A new traitor, Godfrey d’Harcourt, advised landing in Normandy, and promised the aid of his vassals and the use of his entire province. The king landed (July 22nd, 1346), with thirty-two thousand men, at La Hogue St. Waast, in the Cotentin. He easily possessed himself of Barfleur, Cherbourg, Valognes, and St. Lô. The 26th, he was at the walls of Caen--a city larger than any in England excepting London. The inhabitants sallied forth bravely to the encounter. “But as soon as they beheld the approach of the English,” says Froissart,[e] “in three divisions, close and compact, a multitude of banners flying, and saw the archers, to whom they had not been accustomed, they were so frightened that they betook themselves to flight, and not all the world could have stopped them.” The English entered the city with the fugitives, slaying as they went, showing mercy to none. But the inhabitants recovered their courage and defended themselves in their homes; more than five hundred English were dead or wounded when Edward put an end to the fighting, promising the inhabitants to spare their lives.[18] Louviers, which was already great, wealthy, and commercial, was next taken. An attempt on Rouen had miscarried. He returned along the left bank of the Seine, burning Pont-de-l’Arche, Vernon, Poissy, and St. Germain. His couriers came within sight of Paris, and burned Bourg-la-Reine and St. Cloud.