From Tours the king’s forces marched to Poitiers, which fell after three days’ cannonade, and Bourges surrendered after a siege of ten days. The terms of capitulation conceded to the inhabitants were an amnesty for the past and liberty of conscience according to the Edict of January. Orleans was now quite insulated; but the Catholic chiefs, instead of following up their successes in that direction, drew off their army to Rouen, through which they feared that English forces might be poured into the country. Rouen was at that time one of the most important cities of France: there was none in the north to equal it in commerce, wealth, and population. Situated on the Seine, midway between its mouth and Paris, it commanded the main highway into the interior; and, so long as it was in hostile hands, no serious attempt could be made upon the strong city of Orleans. Strategical and political reasons being thus in favor of attacking Rouen, the royal army, now 18,000 strong, under the orders of the constable, sat down before the city on the 25th September. The Count of Montgomery’s garrison was about 4000 men, of whom nearly half were English. The trenches were opened to the sound of music, as was done more than once in the time of Louis XIV. In the town, as in the Huguenot armies generally, all was serious and severe; prayer-meetings and sermons with psalm-singing were the amusements of the garrison, who, like the Covenanters and Puritans, fought none the worse because they had bent the knee to God before marching to battle. The siege was pressed vigorously, for the cold nights and heavy rains of autumn were approaching, when the royal army would be unable to keep the field. The citizens of Paris, who were anxious to recover a city which interrupted all traffic with the sea, offered the king 200,000 crowns to pay and victual the besieging force.[312] Catherine, attended by her licentious maids of honor--her “flying squadron,” as they were afterward called--visited the army to encourage the troops by her presence. It is said that she went every day to Fort St. Catherine, where the fire was hottest; and when the constable and Guise remonstrated with her, representing that it was not her duty to expose her life, she answered: “Why should I spare myself more than you? Have I less interest in the result, or less courage? True, I have not your strength of body, but I have equal resolution of mind.” The soldiers called her “mater castrorum.”