arching on Rouen in late May 1418, the English first clashed with Burgundian troops at pont de l'Arche, a situation which king Henry V had been anxious to avoid. The English had no great difficulty in hustling the Burgundian forces aside, and by the end of July 1418, Henry had the city of Rouen completely surrounded. Rouen's defences had been greatly strengthened in the two years since Agincourt and Rouen was anyway one of the largest and best garrisoned towns of France, encircled by a wall nearly 7 kilometres in length, resting on the river to the South and buttressed by no less than sixty towers.
The city had a strong garrison and as Henry lacked sufficient troops to assault the walls the siege dragged on until 20th January 1419. It was during this time, in early December 1418, that the defenders attempted to reduce the demands on their ever-declining food stocks by expelling 12,000 people, the so called bouches inutiles (useless mouths) from the city. Henry refused to let these poor people pass through his lines, and many of them, old men, women and children, perished in the winter chill, starving and helpless, between the walls and the tents of the besiegers.
The scenes of the suffering were recorded by an Englishman, John Page; Here and there were children of two or three, begging for bread and starving, their parents dead.... A woman was clutching her dead baby to her breast, and a child was sucking the breast of its dead mother. There were ten or twelve to every one alive, many dying quietly and lying between the lines as though asleep. The city of Rouen fell to Henry on 13th January 1419.