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The town had a large garrison, and it was fortified with stone walls encircled with two ditches and surrounded by miles of marshland. Rather than risk an assault, the English settled in for a lengthy siege, blockading the settlement by both land and sea. Philip raised an army to relieve Calais, but the recent memory of the defeat at Crécy kept the French from attacking the besiegers. Despite this, the inhabitants put up a long and determined resistance. It was finally in August of 1347 that the defenders were forced to surrender due to a lack of food. Edward subsequently converted the place into an English settlement. The inhabitants of Calais were evicted and replaced by settlers from England. Thereafter it was to remain an English town in northern France for over 200 years.
Calais was rectangular in shape, surrounded by walls and towers dating from the thirteenth century. There were four gates: the Boulogne Gate to the south, the Milkgate to the east, and the Lanterngate and Watergate to the north. The latter faced the harbour, which had a natural breakwater in the form of a narrow spit of land. To protect the approach to the town, a stone tower, known as the Rys-bank Tower, was erected at the end of the spit by order of Edward III. The north-west corner of Calais was adjoined by a castle, consisting of
