Chapter25: The Battle Of Lewes.The barons, on their side, prepared with sober earnestness for the struggle. They were not fighting for personal aggrandisement, but, as an old writer says, “they had in all things one faith and one will—love of God and their neighbour.” So unanimous were they in their brotherly love, that they did not fear to die for their country.It was the dead of night, and a horseman rode towards the village of Fletching. He was armed cap-a-pie, like one who might have to force his way against odds. His armour was dark, and he bore but one cognisance on his shield, the Cross. He was quite alone, but he knew that farther along he should find a sleeping host. The stars shone brightly above him, the country lay buried in sleep, scarcely a light twinkled throughout the expanse.The sound of a deep bell tolling the hour of midnight reached him. It was from the priory which he had left an hour or more previously.“Ere that hour strike again, England’s fate will have been decided,” he said, as if to himself, “and perhaps my account with God and man summed up before His bar. Well, I have a good cause, and a clear conscience, and I can leave it in God’s hands.”And soon from the crest of a low hill he looked down upon the camp of the barons. There were many lights, and the murmur of voices arose.Just then came the stern challenge.“Who goes there?”“A crusader, who as a knight received his spurs from Earl Simon, and now comes to fight by his side to the death for the liberties of England.”“The watchword?”“I have it not—twelve hours have not passed since I landed in England after an absence of years.”“Stand while I summon the guard.”In a little while a small troop approached, their leader the young Lord Walter of Hereford, who had been present, as it chanced, when our hero was knighted. He recognised him with joy.“The Earl of Leicester will be overjoyed to see you. He has long given you up for lost.”“He has not forgotten me?”“Even yesternight he wished you were present to fight by his side.”Our poor Hubert felt his heart throb with joy and pride.As they descended into the camp Hubert perceived the Bishop of Worcester, Walter de Cantilupe, riding through the ranks, and exhorting the soldiers to confess their sins, and to receive absolution and the Holy Communion; assuring them that such as fell would fall in God’s cause, and suffer on behalf of the truth. Behind him his followers distributed white crosses to the soldiers, as if they were crusaders, which they attached to their breasts and backs. In this war of Englishmen against Englishmen there was need of some such mark to distinguish the rival parties.All through the camp religious exercises were proceeding, and when at last Walter of Hereford brought our hero to the tent of Earl Simon, they found him prostrate in fervent prayer.“Father and leader,” said the young earl with deep reverence, “I have brought thee a long-lost son.”The earl rose.“My son! Hubert! Can it be thou, risen from the dead?”“Come to share thy fate for weal or woe, my beloved lord. From thy hands I received knighthood: at thy side will I conquer or die.”The dawn was at hand. The birds began their matin songs, when the stern blast of the trumpet drowned their tiny warblings.The army arose as one man. At first all was confusion, as when bees swarm, which was rapidly reduced into order, as the leaders went up and down with the standard bearers, and the men fell into their ranks. When all was still the earl, the great earl, came forth, armed cap-a-pie, mounted on his charger. The herald proclaimed silence. The deep, manly voice was heard:“Beloved brethren! We are about to fight this day for the liberty of this realm, in honour of God, His blessed Mother, and all the Saints, for the defence of our Mother Church of England, and for the faith of Christ.“Let us therefore pray to our Lord God, that since we are His, He would grant us victory in the battle, and commend ourselves to Him, body, soul, and spirit.”Then the Bishop of Worcester gave the Benediction, after which the vast multitude arose as a man, took their places, and began their onward march. Scouts of the royal army, out foraging, saw them, and bore the tidings to King Henry and Prince Edward at the priory and the castle, and the opposing forces arose in their turn.Before the hour of prime, the earl, by whose side throughout that day rode our Hubert, descried the towers of the priory from the summit of a swelling ridge, and beheld soon after the army of the prince issuing forth from the west gate, and that of the king from the priory below. Earl Simon divided his forces into three parts: the centre he placed under the young Earl of Gloucester, whom he had that morning knighted; the right wing under his two sons, Simon and Guy; the left wing was composed of the Londoners. He himself remained at the head of the reserve behind the centre, where he could see all the field and direct operations. There was no smoke, as in a modern battlefield, to obstruct the view.Prince Edward commanded on the right of the royal troops, and was thus opposed to the Londoners, whom he hated because of their insults to his mother {34}; and Richard commanded the left wing, and was thus opposed to Simon and Guy, the sons of the great earl. The centre was commanded by Henry himself, not by virtue of his ability in the field, but of his exalted rank. The royal standard of the Dragon was raised; a token, said folk, that no quarter was to be given.This was a sign for the attack, and it was begun by that thunderbolt of war, Prince Edward, who charged full upon the Londoners. The poor light-armed cits were ill prepared for the shock of so heavy a brigade of cavalry; and they broke and yielded like a dam before a resistless flood. No mercy was shown them. Many were driven into the Ouse on the right, and so miserably drowned; others fled in a body before the prince, who pursued them for four miles, hacking, hewing, quartering, slaughtering. Just like the Rupert of the later Civil Wars, he sacrificed the victory to the headlong impetuosity of his nature.Now let us turn to the left. On the crest of the hill, which there rose steeply, were the tents and baggage of the barons. Over one of these floated Earl Simon’s banner, and close by was a litter in which he had been carried during a recent illness, but which now only contained four unfortunate burgesses of London town who were detained as hostages because they had attempted to betray the city to King Henry.Towards this height the foolish Richard directed his charge, fully believing that the head and front of all the mischief, Simon himself, was in that litter, and that he should crush him and the rebellion together. But such showers of stones and arrows came from the hill that his forces were disorganised, and when Earl Simon suddenly strengthened his sons by the reserve, their united forces crushed the King of the Romans and all his men. They descended with all the impetus of a charge from above, and the enemy fled.Then the earl might have made the mistake which Prince Edward made on the opposite side, and followed the flying foe; but he was far too wise. He saw on his left the centre under the Earl of Gloucester, fighting valiantly on equal terms with the royal centre under King Henry. He fell upon its flank with all the force of his victorious array: one deadly struggle and the royal lines bent, curved, broke, then fled in disorder, the old king galloping furiously towards the priory, fleeing in great fear for dear life.Yet more ludicrous was the fate of his brother Richard, King of the Romans, who, while Henry reached the priory wounded, had taken refuge in the windmill, where he was being baited, almost in joke, by the victorious foes, amidst cries of:“Come out you bad miller!”“You to turn a wretched mill master!”“You who defied us all so proudly!”“You, the ever Augustus!”At length the poor badgered king, seeing that they were preparing to set the mill on fire and smoke him out, surrendered to a follower of the Earl of Gloucester, Sir John Bix, and came out all covered with flour, while men sang:The King of the Romans gathered a host,And made him a castle of a mill post.Meanwhile the camp on the hill, with the banner and the aforesaid litter, had aroused the attention of Prince Edward, just returning from harrying the Londoners.“Up the hill, my men,” he said. “There is the very devil himself in that litter.”The camp was stoutly defended, but after a while the defenders were forced to fly by superior force. Then the prince’s men rushed upon the litter, Drogo of Walderne foremost. They thought they had got the great earl.“Come out, Simon, thou devil, thou worst of traitors,” they cried.Within were only the four shrinking, timid burgesses, and Drogo and his band dragged them out, shrieking in vain that they were for the king, and cut them to pieces, poor unfortunates. But they did not find Earl Simon, and only slew their own friends; and when the confusion was over they looked down upon the battlefield, where one glance showed them that the main battle was lost, and the barons in possession of the field.In vain Edward besought his men, now much reduced in numbers, to make another charge. They saw the enemy waiting with levelled lances to receive them, and felt that the position they were asked to assail was impregnable.Edward was a most affectionate son, and was very anxious to learn the fate of his royal father, so he determined to force his way to the priory at all hazards, and made a circuit of the town so as to reach the sacred pile from the unassailed quarter. Night was now approaching, and the prince’s party had to fight their way at every step with the victorious horsemen of the barons. Edward’s giant strength and long sweeping sword made him a way over heaps of corpses strewn before him, but others were less fortunate.Hard by the river, on the eastern side of the town, and beneath the high cliffs which rise almost precipitously to the isolated group of downs, there was a terrible charge, a hand-to-hand melee. Drogo of Walderne and Harengod, his sword red with blood, his lance couched, was confronted here by a knight in sable armour, his sole cognisance—the White Cross.They rode at each other. Drogo’s lance grazed his opponent’s casque: the unknown knight drove his missile through corselet and breast, and Drogo went down crashing from his steed. The combat went sweeping on past them, the desperate foes fighting as they rode. Edward and his horsemen, less and less in number each minute, still riding for the priory, straining every nerve to reach it; the others assailing them at every turn.The Earl of Warrenne, William of Valence, Guy of Lusignan, and Earl Bigod of Norwich, were separated from the rest of the band, and, despairing of attaining the prince again, rode across the low alluvial flats for Pevensey.By God, who is over us, much did they sin,That let pass o’er sea the Earl of Warrene,Much hath he robbed us, by moor and by fen,Our gold and our silver he carried hath henne {35};Sang the citizens of Lewes afterwards of black Earl John.Let us return in the shadows of the evening, while the prince gains the priory with a few of his followers, by sheer valour, while the rest are drowned in the river, or lost in the marshes—let us return to the place where Drogo de Harengod went down before an unknown foe.“Dost thou know me?” said the conqueror, bending over the dying man and raising his helm.“Art thou alive, or a ghost?” says a conscience-stricken voice.“Nay, I am Hubert of Walderne, the cousin thou hast hated and injured. But our quarrel is settled now; thou art a dying man.”“Nay, not dying. I must live to repent.“Oh, the key! the key! Throw this key into the moat!“Nay, he will haunt me. Tell me, am I really dying? Nay, if it cost me my soul, I will not baulk my vengeance. Besides, it is too late!“Martin!”A rush of blood came to his lips, and Drogo of Harengod fell back a corpse on the blood-stained grass. Hubert gazed upon him a moment, then loosed the armour to give him air, but it was all over.“God rest his soul. Our enmity is over, but what did he mean about the key?”He felt in the gypsire of the dead enemy. There was a key, unsightly, rusty, and heavy.“Why, I remember this key. It is the key of the dungeon at Walderne. Whom can he have got there? Why is it here? What did he mean about Martin?”A horrible dread seized him—he could not resist the impulse which came upon him to ride to Walderne at once. He sought Earl Simon, obtained a troop, and started immediately through the dark and gloomy forest for Walderne.
The barons, on their side, prepared with sober earnestness for the struggle. They were not fighting for personal aggrandisement, but, as an old writer says, “they had in all things one faith and one will—love of God and their neighbour.” So unanimous were they in their brotherly love, that they did not fear to die for their country.
It was the dead of night, and a horseman rode towards the village of Fletching. He was armed cap-a-pie, like one who might have to force his way against odds. His armour was dark, and he bore but one cognisance on his shield, the Cross. He was quite alone, but he knew that farther along he should find a sleeping host. The stars shone brightly above him, the country lay buried in sleep, scarcely a light twinkled throughout the expanse.
The sound of a deep bell tolling the hour of midnight reached him. It was from the priory which he had left an hour or more previously.
“Ere that hour strike again, England’s fate will have been decided,” he said, as if to himself, “and perhaps my account with God and man summed up before His bar. Well, I have a good cause, and a clear conscience, and I can leave it in God’s hands.”
And soon from the crest of a low hill he looked down upon the camp of the barons. There were many lights, and the murmur of voices arose.
Just then came the stern challenge.
“Who goes there?”
“A crusader, who as a knight received his spurs from Earl Simon, and now comes to fight by his side to the death for the liberties of England.”
“The watchword?”
“I have it not—twelve hours have not passed since I landed in England after an absence of years.”
“Stand while I summon the guard.”
In a little while a small troop approached, their leader the young Lord Walter of Hereford, who had been present, as it chanced, when our hero was knighted. He recognised him with joy.
“The Earl of Leicester will be overjoyed to see you. He has long given you up for lost.”
“He has not forgotten me?”
“Even yesternight he wished you were present to fight by his side.”
Our poor Hubert felt his heart throb with joy and pride.
As they descended into the camp Hubert perceived the Bishop of Worcester, Walter de Cantilupe, riding through the ranks, and exhorting the soldiers to confess their sins, and to receive absolution and the Holy Communion; assuring them that such as fell would fall in God’s cause, and suffer on behalf of the truth. Behind him his followers distributed white crosses to the soldiers, as if they were crusaders, which they attached to their breasts and backs. In this war of Englishmen against Englishmen there was need of some such mark to distinguish the rival parties.
All through the camp religious exercises were proceeding, and when at last Walter of Hereford brought our hero to the tent of Earl Simon, they found him prostrate in fervent prayer.
“Father and leader,” said the young earl with deep reverence, “I have brought thee a long-lost son.”
The earl rose.
“My son! Hubert! Can it be thou, risen from the dead?”
“Come to share thy fate for weal or woe, my beloved lord. From thy hands I received knighthood: at thy side will I conquer or die.”
The dawn was at hand. The birds began their matin songs, when the stern blast of the trumpet drowned their tiny warblings.
The army arose as one man. At first all was confusion, as when bees swarm, which was rapidly reduced into order, as the leaders went up and down with the standard bearers, and the men fell into their ranks. When all was still the earl, the great earl, came forth, armed cap-a-pie, mounted on his charger. The herald proclaimed silence. The deep, manly voice was heard:
“Beloved brethren! We are about to fight this day for the liberty of this realm, in honour of God, His blessed Mother, and all the Saints, for the defence of our Mother Church of England, and for the faith of Christ.
“Let us therefore pray to our Lord God, that since we are His, He would grant us victory in the battle, and commend ourselves to Him, body, soul, and spirit.”
Then the Bishop of Worcester gave the Benediction, after which the vast multitude arose as a man, took their places, and began their onward march. Scouts of the royal army, out foraging, saw them, and bore the tidings to King Henry and Prince Edward at the priory and the castle, and the opposing forces arose in their turn.
Before the hour of prime, the earl, by whose side throughout that day rode our Hubert, descried the towers of the priory from the summit of a swelling ridge, and beheld soon after the army of the prince issuing forth from the west gate, and that of the king from the priory below. Earl Simon divided his forces into three parts: the centre he placed under the young Earl of Gloucester, whom he had that morning knighted; the right wing under his two sons, Simon and Guy; the left wing was composed of the Londoners. He himself remained at the head of the reserve behind the centre, where he could see all the field and direct operations. There was no smoke, as in a modern battlefield, to obstruct the view.
Prince Edward commanded on the right of the royal troops, and was thus opposed to the Londoners, whom he hated because of their insults to his mother {34}; and Richard commanded the left wing, and was thus opposed to Simon and Guy, the sons of the great earl. The centre was commanded by Henry himself, not by virtue of his ability in the field, but of his exalted rank. The royal standard of the Dragon was raised; a token, said folk, that no quarter was to be given.
This was a sign for the attack, and it was begun by that thunderbolt of war, Prince Edward, who charged full upon the Londoners. The poor light-armed cits were ill prepared for the shock of so heavy a brigade of cavalry; and they broke and yielded like a dam before a resistless flood. No mercy was shown them. Many were driven into the Ouse on the right, and so miserably drowned; others fled in a body before the prince, who pursued them for four miles, hacking, hewing, quartering, slaughtering. Just like the Rupert of the later Civil Wars, he sacrificed the victory to the headlong impetuosity of his nature.
Now let us turn to the left. On the crest of the hill, which there rose steeply, were the tents and baggage of the barons. Over one of these floated Earl Simon’s banner, and close by was a litter in which he had been carried during a recent illness, but which now only contained four unfortunate burgesses of London town who were detained as hostages because they had attempted to betray the city to King Henry.
Towards this height the foolish Richard directed his charge, fully believing that the head and front of all the mischief, Simon himself, was in that litter, and that he should crush him and the rebellion together. But such showers of stones and arrows came from the hill that his forces were disorganised, and when Earl Simon suddenly strengthened his sons by the reserve, their united forces crushed the King of the Romans and all his men. They descended with all the impetus of a charge from above, and the enemy fled.
Then the earl might have made the mistake which Prince Edward made on the opposite side, and followed the flying foe; but he was far too wise. He saw on his left the centre under the Earl of Gloucester, fighting valiantly on equal terms with the royal centre under King Henry. He fell upon its flank with all the force of his victorious array: one deadly struggle and the royal lines bent, curved, broke, then fled in disorder, the old king galloping furiously towards the priory, fleeing in great fear for dear life.
Yet more ludicrous was the fate of his brother Richard, King of the Romans, who, while Henry reached the priory wounded, had taken refuge in the windmill, where he was being baited, almost in joke, by the victorious foes, amidst cries of:
“Come out you bad miller!”
“You to turn a wretched mill master!”
“You who defied us all so proudly!”
“You, the ever Augustus!”
At length the poor badgered king, seeing that they were preparing to set the mill on fire and smoke him out, surrendered to a follower of the Earl of Gloucester, Sir John Bix, and came out all covered with flour, while men sang:
The King of the Romans gathered a host,And made him a castle of a mill post.
Meanwhile the camp on the hill, with the banner and the aforesaid litter, had aroused the attention of Prince Edward, just returning from harrying the Londoners.
“Up the hill, my men,” he said. “There is the very devil himself in that litter.”
The camp was stoutly defended, but after a while the defenders were forced to fly by superior force. Then the prince’s men rushed upon the litter, Drogo of Walderne foremost. They thought they had got the great earl.
“Come out, Simon, thou devil, thou worst of traitors,” they cried.
Within were only the four shrinking, timid burgesses, and Drogo and his band dragged them out, shrieking in vain that they were for the king, and cut them to pieces, poor unfortunates. But they did not find Earl Simon, and only slew their own friends; and when the confusion was over they looked down upon the battlefield, where one glance showed them that the main battle was lost, and the barons in possession of the field.
In vain Edward besought his men, now much reduced in numbers, to make another charge. They saw the enemy waiting with levelled lances to receive them, and felt that the position they were asked to assail was impregnable.
Edward was a most affectionate son, and was very anxious to learn the fate of his royal father, so he determined to force his way to the priory at all hazards, and made a circuit of the town so as to reach the sacred pile from the unassailed quarter. Night was now approaching, and the prince’s party had to fight their way at every step with the victorious horsemen of the barons. Edward’s giant strength and long sweeping sword made him a way over heaps of corpses strewn before him, but others were less fortunate.
Hard by the river, on the eastern side of the town, and beneath the high cliffs which rise almost precipitously to the isolated group of downs, there was a terrible charge, a hand-to-hand melee. Drogo of Walderne and Harengod, his sword red with blood, his lance couched, was confronted here by a knight in sable armour, his sole cognisance—the White Cross.
They rode at each other. Drogo’s lance grazed his opponent’s casque: the unknown knight drove his missile through corselet and breast, and Drogo went down crashing from his steed. The combat went sweeping on past them, the desperate foes fighting as they rode. Edward and his horsemen, less and less in number each minute, still riding for the priory, straining every nerve to reach it; the others assailing them at every turn.
The Earl of Warrenne, William of Valence, Guy of Lusignan, and Earl Bigod of Norwich, were separated from the rest of the band, and, despairing of attaining the prince again, rode across the low alluvial flats for Pevensey.
By God, who is over us, much did they sin,That let pass o’er sea the Earl of Warrene,Much hath he robbed us, by moor and by fen,Our gold and our silver he carried hath henne {35};
Sang the citizens of Lewes afterwards of black Earl John.
Let us return in the shadows of the evening, while the prince gains the priory with a few of his followers, by sheer valour, while the rest are drowned in the river, or lost in the marshes—let us return to the place where Drogo de Harengod went down before an unknown foe.
“Dost thou know me?” said the conqueror, bending over the dying man and raising his helm.
“Art thou alive, or a ghost?” says a conscience-stricken voice.
“Nay, I am Hubert of Walderne, the cousin thou hast hated and injured. But our quarrel is settled now; thou art a dying man.”
“Nay, not dying. I must live to repent.
“Oh, the key! the key! Throw this key into the moat!
“Nay, he will haunt me. Tell me, am I really dying? Nay, if it cost me my soul, I will not baulk my vengeance. Besides, it is too late!
“Martin!”
A rush of blood came to his lips, and Drogo of Harengod fell back a corpse on the blood-stained grass. Hubert gazed upon him a moment, then loosed the armour to give him air, but it was all over.
“God rest his soul. Our enmity is over, but what did he mean about the key?”
He felt in the gypsire of the dead enemy. There was a key, unsightly, rusty, and heavy.
“Why, I remember this key. It is the key of the dungeon at Walderne. Whom can he have got there? Why is it here? What did he mean about Martin?”
A horrible dread seized him—he could not resist the impulse which came upon him to ride to Walderne at once. He sought Earl Simon, obtained a troop, and started immediately through the dark and gloomy forest for Walderne.