In the meantime, while Coligny’s position was growing worse and worse, the position of D’Andelot in Orleans had also become serious. The duke of Guise invested the city on February 4, and got possession of Portereau (February 6), a faubourg of Orleans across the river, which had been fortified during the previous summer. But the Huguenots still held the town at their end of the bridge and broke several of the arches down. A tiny island lay in the stream and this the duke planned to reach by filling thousands of sacks with sand and gravel and throwing them into the river between the banks at Portereau and the island from whence he would be more able to attack Orleans with cannon.[670] But it being winter time, the river was too deep and the current too strong. Failing this, he planned to cut the river above Orleans in order to let the water into the meadow lands.[671] The spirited siege lasted many days. Every kind of metal was impressed into service by those of Orleans, including shells made of brass, “which was a new device and very terrible,” and their ammunition seemed likely to outlast that of their enemy. The Catholic position around Orleans was by no means an enviable one. Food, money, and ammunition were lacking. All Guise’s men-at-arms and light horsemen lived at discretion—that is, they quartered themselves on the surrounding villages and forced the poor people of the country to feed them and their horses. The court was doing the same at Blois to the “marvellous destruction” of the country. The lack of powder bade fair to be fatal to the duke’s success, for the government’s powder factories at Chartres, Chateaudun, and Paris were all blown up, accidentally or otherwise, about this time, that of Paris having occurred on January 28, 1563, with great destruction of property and some lives.[672] In consequence of these disasters, the Catholic artillery had to send all the way to Flanders for gunpowder. Although some breaches were made in the wall by the Catholics, the duke of Guise delayed final assault, for two reasons: first, because the queen mother hoped to take the city by composition, secondly, because Catholic reinforcements were looked for late in March out of Germany, Switzerland, and Gascony, to the number of ten thousand.