Meanwhile, the duke of Burgundy was beginning to put himself in motion. First, he went to Paris from St. Denis, where he made the king go through the solemn mockery of displaying the oriflamme, to remain a long while at Pontoise, and again a long while at Beauvais. There he received another message from Rouen by a man who had risked his life to convey it. It was the voice of an expiring town, and said merely that fifty thousand men had died of famine in Rouen and its environs. The duke of Burgundy was touched by this sad tale, and promised succour; then having got rid of the messenger, and feeling assured that he should hear no more of Rouen, he turned his back on Normandy, and took the king to Provins. A surrender was then inevitable; but the king of England, desirous of making an example on account of so long a resistance, wished to have the inhabitants at his mercy. The Rouennese, who well knew what was the mercy of Henry V, resolved to undermine a wall, and to pass out that way by night with arms in their hands, trusting in God’s grace. The king and the bishops reconsidered the matter, and the archbishop of Canterbury personally offered the besieged the following terms of capitulation: (1) their lives to be spared, five men excepted (those of the five who were rich, or churchmen, got themselves out of the difficulty, and Alain Blanchard paid for all; the English were bent on an execution, in order to ratify the principle that the resistance had been rebellion against the lawful king); (2) for the same reason, Henry insured to the town all the privileges which the kings of France, his ancestors, had granted to it, “before the usurpation of Philip of Valois”; (3) it had to pay a tremendous fine--300,000 gold crowns--one-half before the end of January (it was already the 19th of that month), the other half in February, 1419. To squeeze all that from a depopulated, ruined town was no easy matter. HENRY AND JOHN THE FEARLESS (1419 A.D.) The king of England being occupied with the task of organising the country he had conquered, granted a truce to the two French parties, the Burgundians and the Armagnacs. He felt it necessary to refit his army; and, above all, to collect money and discharge his debts to the bishops, who had lent him funds for his long expedition. Henry was so far from apprehending danger from the dauphin, that he was not afraid to displease the duke of Burgundy. The latter sought an interview with him, and proposed to him a marriage with a daughter of Charles VI, with Guienne and Normandy for a dower; but Henry required also Brittany as a dependence of Normandy, besides Maine, Anjou, and Touraine.