CHAPTER L
THE BATTLE
While Pembroke was approaching Lincoln with his army, marching in theadmirable order already described, with banners waving in the sunshine,a messenger, instructed by Dame Nichola de Camville, having left thecastle by the postern door, took his way northward, and escaping theobservation of the Count de Perche and his riders, who, having goneforth to reconnoitre, were then returning to the city, came to theprotector, and doffing his cap with much deference, bent low to thegreat warrior-statesman.
“All hail, my lord earl!” said he, gaily. “My lady greets thee by me,and bids me say that never was young lover more welcome to lady’s bowerthan is thy coming to her in this hour of peril; likewise, if such beyour good pleasure, you can enter the castle by the postern gate, whichhas been opened on tidings of your approach, and thence make your wayinto the city. But be that as you will, lord earl.”
Pembroke acknowledged in courteous phrase the greeting of Nichola deCamville, and mused for a moment over the message. However, he declinedthe invitation to enter by the postern, deeming a bolder course the moreexpedient. But he nevertheless resolved to profit by the postern, andinstructed Falco to enter with his whole division and the crossbowmen,with the object of distracting the enemy, and, if possible, making asortie and forcing open one of the gates. Without delay the necessaryarrangements were made, and while the protector led his forces to thenorth gate, and caused his trumpets to sound an onset, Falco, withpractised skill and characteristic promptitude, threw his mercenariesand the crossbowmen--mostly English yeomen--into the castle by means ofthe postern, and conveying them to the roofs and ramparts with arapidity that seemed magical, gave the signal to shoot.
The order was obeyed to some purpose. Instantly a murderous discharge ofbolts from the crossbows answered the signal and did terrible executionboth among the cavalry and infantry of the French count andAnglo-Norman barons, and caused such a yell of agony from the wounded asintimated unmistakably to the protector that the foreign warrior wasdoing his work with zeal and determination.
In fact, the effect was terrific. Horses and their riders rolled on theground, and while yet men were struggling to rise, and chargers werekicking, mad with the pain from their wounds, and all was confusion,Falco boldly threw open the castle gate, pushed into the city, andthrowing himself into the midst of the enemy, endeavoured to clear aspace around the north gate, at which Pembroke’s trumpets were soundingand his men thundering for admittance.
But Falco found that here he had terrible obstacles to encounter.Recovering from their surprise, the French and Anglo-Normans camerushing to the spot like eagles to the carnage, and answered Falco’sPoictevin war-cry of “St. George for the puissant duke!” with loudshouts of “Montjoie, St. Denis!” “God aid us and our Lord Louis!” Ahand-to-hand conflict then took place, and Falco and his band weresurrounded by a host of foes, and while this was going on a charge ofNorman cavalry rendered their predicament quite the reverse of enviable.In vain they struggled and battled valiantly against the numerousassailants who swarmed to the spot. It was of no avail. Numbersembarrassed their movements and impeded their action. Reginald, surnamedCrocus, a brave knight of Falco’s, was killed by his leader’s side;Falco himself was carried away by the crowd of foes and made prisoner;and for a brief period it seemed that the mercenaries and crossbowmenwere doomed either to yield or to perish to a man.
But, meanwhile, this scuffle had been so exciting that the French hadthought less than they ought in prudence to have done of the formidablehost outside the walls, and the knights and barons appointed to guardthe north gate had been allured from their post. The consequence wasfatal to their leader and their cause. Making a great effort as the dinof the conflict within the walls reached his ears, Pembroke succeeded inforcing the gate, and no sooner was it opened than his infantry rushedin, carrying all before them, and shouting, “Down with the foreigners!Down with the outlandish men!” and Falco’s division, availing themselvesof the confusion caused by the entrance of the English, charged onceand again upon the enemy with such right good will that they rescuedtheir leader, and enabled him to renew the combat which he had sobravely begun.
And now the Count de Perche had reason to discover and to repent theerror of which he had been guilty when he rejected the advice of RobertFitzwalter, and refused to march out of Lincoln and give his enemiesbattle in the open country. Engaged in a desperate struggle in narrowstreets where cavalry could not charge, the French from the beginninghad so decidedly the worst of the encounter that they fought almostwithout hope of victory. Horses and riders alike suffered in theconflict, and while the chargers were “mown down like pigs” by thecrossbowmen, the French knights, dismounted and at the mercy of theirassailants, surrendered almost in a mass. Nor did the Anglo-Normanbarons display any of that high spirit with which, in later civil wars,such nobles as Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, faced the danger thatthey had provoked and defied. On the contrary, they gave up their swordsalmost to a man, and resigned themselves sheepishly to their fate.Robert Fitzwalter yielded himself prisoner, so did the Earl ofWinchester, so did the Earl of Hereford, and William de Roos, andWilliam Beauchamp, and William Moubray, and Gilbert de Gant, who musthave felt crestfallen indeed as he thought of the earldom which had beengiven to him by a man not entitled to grant it, and for a victory thatwas never to be won. All these magnates, who had talked so boastfully ayear earlier, when they brought Prince Louis into England and did homageto him at Westminster, now stood with mortification in their faces, andperhaps remorse at their hearts, baffled, conquered, and captive, afterhaving failed in their criminal endeavour to reduce the country, forwhose laws and liberties they had professed such respect, under the ruleof a French prince, who, they well knew, could only rule as a conqueror.
But the love of life, or the fear of death, which prompted Fitzwalter,and De Quency, and Bohun to surrender rather than fall bravely was notso contagious as to reach the heart of the Count de Perche. Never evenfor a moment did he show the white feather, or any abatement of thedefiant courage that had characterised his career in England. Not,indeed, that there remained even a chance of redeeming the fortunes ofthe day. Roland and Oliver, and all the Paladins of Charlemagne, couldthey have come out of their graves, would have struggled in vain torally the broken ranks of the army that had, a few hours earlier, beenso confident, and which was now flying in terror through the south gate.On all sides the count was deserted. His Anglo-Norman allies wereyielding before his eyes, his French comrades were endeavouring to savethemselves by flight, forgetting in their haste that in order to do sothey must pass through the country whose inhabitants they had recentlyexasperated by their outrages, and who were panting for an opportunityof avenging the wrongs that had been done to them and to theirs.
Still, so daunted were the French with the more immediate dangers thatbeset them, that they no sooner saw how the day was going than theybethought them of escaping, and began to move towards the south gate ofLincoln, with the idea of making for London, the Marshal of France andthe Castellan of Arras heading the flight.
It was no easy matter, however, for the French to get out of the citywhich they had entered as conquerors, for the flail of the south gatehad been placed transversely across, and greatly impeded their egress,especially that of the cavalry. In fact, when they rode up to escape,they were fain to dismount to open the gate; and when they passed out itimmediately closed, and the flail again fell across it, so that theprocess of dismounting had to be gone through by every party of fugitivehorsemen, and almost by every individual horseman. It was well for themthat the English were that day in no sanguinary mood, for had there beenany strong inclination in Pembroke’s ranks to deal summarily with thefoe, few, if any, of the vanquished would have left Lincoln alive.
As it was, their position was not enviable. All over the country throughwhich they had to pass on their way to London the yeomen and peasantrywere abroad, armed with swords and bludgeons, and did terrible executionamong the
fugitives, both horse and foot, smiting them hip and thigh,and giving them no quarter. Nevertheless, two hundred knights reachedthe capital, and carried intelligence to the citizens that all was lost,that the grand army, which had on the last day of April marched out oftheir gates with such high hopes of triumph, was utterly destroyed, andthat Pembroke was in a fair way of putting all King Henry’s enemies,whether barons or citizens, under King Henry’s feet.
Moreover, the news was speedily carried by the French fugitives toDover, where Louis was making his third attempt to take the castle,which held out so bravely under Hubert de Burgh.
“By St. Denis!” said the prince with a sneer, “it is all owing to yourflight that your comrades have been taken captive. Had you acted thepart of brave men you might have saved all.”
Runnymede and Lincoln Fair: A Story of the Great Charter Page 52