The duke having been informed of the advance of the king's army, which was only a day's march from the castle, had decamped in the night, abandoning his material of war.
Great was the joy at La Roche-Pont. The inhabitants of the town soon came and confirmed the news. The last of the Burgundians had departed about noon, not without leaving many of their men on the field; for, in spite of the injunctions of the duke, the inhabitants of the lower town of Saint-Julien had been considerably plundered and had driven out the last of the soldiers with stones and pike thrusts.
Soon afterwards the Sieur de la Roche-Pont did homage for his fief to King Philip Augustus; and the monks re-entered their abbey, for the repair of which the king gave five hundred livres.
[Footnote 30: See the general bird's-eye view, Fig. 37.]
[Footnote 31: The parts of the castle marked red are those taken by the Burgundians; those marked black are still retained by the defenders. At _a_ is marked the breach in the barbican; at _b_ the filling up of the fosse and the first breach made in the curtain; at _c_ the second breach. At _o o_ are seen the Burgundian posts established on the night of the 6th and 7th of June; at _x_ the outline of the subterranean passage of the refuge postern of the donjon; at _z_ the quarry; at P the route traversed by Pierre Landry and Eleanor's escort; at R their place of concealment, and at S the point where they were got into the castle by means of a rope.]
_THE FIRST DEFENCES AGAINST FIRE ARTILLERY._
King John had possessed himself of the duchy of Burgundy and united it with the crown; he resigned it in favour of his son Philip, who, as is well known, had distinguished himself on the fatal day of Poictiers. From that epoch till the time of Charles the Bold, the duchy had remained in the hands of the descendants of King John; and although the dukes of Burgundy were very warlike, and had formed a league with the English against the crown of France, in consequence of the quarrel that arose in 1400 between Philip and the Duke Louis d'Orleans, brother of Charles VI., the duchy was relatively at peace, while the north of France, as far as the Loire, was in the power of foreigners.