On the approach of the enemy the bridges over the Eure outside the town were destroyed. On the last day of February, 1568, the Huguenot army, commanded by the gallant Condé himself, encamped at Lèves and Josaphat, and in the suburbs about the gates Drouaise, Guillaume, Morard and S. Michel. Their numbers are given variously at 10,000 and 45,000 men. Their artillery consisted of only five siege pieces and four small culverins. The first four days of March were employed by the enemy in fortifying their positions, and by the Catholic Chartrains in skirmishing about the environs and setting fire to the suburbs of the town. M. de Linières, their vigorous leader, who was afterwards to meet his death on the battlefield of Jarnac, destroyed, as a necessary measure of war, Mainvilliers, and the monasteries of the Franciscans (with its splendid library) and of S. John. The Huguenots, on the other hand, endeavoured to preserve some buildings which might afford them cover, but they destroyed the Churches of S. Chéron and S. Barthélemy, which could be of no use to them. These preliminaries gave the inhabitants of Chartres time to complete an entrenchment stretching from the Monastery of S. Père to the Porte Morard, and to construct also a platform near the convent of the Sœurs-de-S.-Paul, on which was mounted a cannon named _La Huguenotte_, which had been taken from the enemy at the Battle of Dreux. This piece did such good service during the siege that it soon earned the name of ‘The Good Catholic!’ On the 5th of March the German soldiers, the Reiters and Lanskenets of the enemy, took up a position at the entrance of S. Maurice and at the Filles-Dieu, and opened two batteries, one opposite the Porte Drouaise, masked by the walls of the house _Trois-Maures_, the other in the enclosure of the Filles-Dieu, intending to take the same gate on the flank. The bombardment began on the following day.