Artillery was beginning to play a great rôle in battles and sieges. That of the besiegers was badly handled, and the bourgeois laughed at the unskilful English cannoneers who threw eighty-pound balls into the town and killed no one.[39] The Orléanais artillery was very different. It was composed of seventy pieces, aimed by twelve master cannoneers, expert at firing. Each cannon had its name and its own particular duty. The good cannon _Riflard_ (Clean Sweep) killed its man at every shot.[b] Another one, too, was the celebrated culverin of a skilful Lorrainian cannoneer, Maître Jean; the two, man and culverin, made the finest hits. The English came at last to know this Maître Jean; he never ceased killing them except to make game of them: from time to time he would drop down and pretend to be dead; his body was carried off into the town; the English were in ecstasy when--behold! back he would come, alive and merry, and fire upon them worse than ever.[c] But the luckiest shot of all was fired by a child [according to Grafton, the son of a gunner who had gone to dinner]. This schoolboy came across a fully loaded piece on the rampart. He lit the fuse and ran away. The ball went straight into the face of the earl of Salisbury, who was standing on one of the bastilles and to whom, at that very instant, William Glasdale was saying, “My lord, behold your town.” The English commander was dead; and the next day the bastard of Orleans, the handsome, brave Dunois, entered the town with the best knights of the time--La Hire, Saintrailles, Marshal de Broussac, and six or seven hundred soldiers. Others followed until little by little seven thousand were gathered in Orleans.[b] _The “Battle of the Herrings” (1429 A.D.)_ The siege continued with various success to the 12th of February, 1429, with sundry episodes in the way of sorties, feigned attacks, conflicts about provision entering the town, and even duels, to amuse the two parties and try their respective mettle. They went on slowly completing their fortifications, and it was to be foreseen that the town would be at last almost entirely shut in.