At the imminent peril of their lives, but preferring death in the open to the starvation of rats in a hole, four nobles and four burgesses got through the English lines once more, with a last appeal to the Duke of Burgundy and the King, roundly denying all allegiance to them if no attempt to help were made. The Duke himself was base enough to answer that on the fourth day after Christmas help would come, and this though he must have known that there was no real chance of succour. But with a pitiable confidence in their leaders the envoys dragged themselves back to Rouen and bade the garrison hold out only for another fifteen days, and then they should be rescued. To men already starving we can scarce imagine what the delay of another fortnight meant. It was drawing near to Christmas. From the English camp two priests were seen advancing towards those phantoms of still visible humanity that stretched their fleshless arms to heaven from the city moat. The King was sending food and drink to them for the love of Him whose birth was celebrated on the morrow. The miserable creatures ate and drank with hideous cries that brought the starving garrison to the walls to watch them; but they only gained the strength to suffer pain a little longer, for the next day the English lines closed up again and no more food was to be had. One more bitter disappointment the citizens were destined to suffer before the end came. From the right bank of the Seine two Norman nobles, Jacques d'Harcourt and the Sire de Moreuil attempted to draw the English into an ambuscade. They had only two thousand men, but they might well have created sufficient diversion to render a victorious sally possible from the city, for the English imagined it was the royal army of rescue come at last. But the eager watchers from the walls of Rouen had the mortification of seeing their compatriots put to flight by a far smaller body of the enemy, and their last hope faded like dew before the sun. Then the fateful twenty-ninth of December came, and went, without a sign of royal or Burgundian help. For two more miserable days the citizens waited in vain, and not till fifty thousand persons had died of famine did they think of surrender. Their walls were still intact, their hearts as stout as ever, but starvation began to make irreparable breaches where the enemy's artillery had been of no avail. So on the eve of New Year's Day, the envoys chosen by the meeting in the Hotel de Ville, went out to parley with the English.