Chapter I: The War with Louis (2)

No sooner did the Marshal hear that Louis was back than he gave orders for the immediate razing of all the castles which had been retaken, except Farnham.[143] It was Farnham that Louis now turned to attack. The outer bailey was speedily captured by assault; but the keep, as a foreign chronicler quaintly says, “heeded it not.”[144] Next day (Friday, 28th April) Earl Saer of Winchester came to Louis asking for help to relieve Mountsorel.[145] Its garrison of ten knights and some men at arms under Henry de Braybroke had held out manfully for nearly a month, but had now found it needful to ask their lord, Saer, for succour.[146] After some consultation Louis, “being unable to get rid of him otherwise,”[147] sent him to London with orders that some of the leaders there should supply him with troops and accompany him to Mountsorel for the twofold purpose of relieving that fortress and “subduing the whole province” to Louis himself. Under the joint command of Saer, the count of Perche, Robert Fitz Walter, and some other barons, a large body of knights and men-at-arms, some English, some French, and “all coveting their neighbour’s goods,” as an indignant chronicler says, set out accordingly from London on Monday, 1st May.[148]

From S. Alban’s, where they halted for the night, the French mercenaries went about plundering churches, desecrating cemeteries, and putting “all sorts of people” to torture and ransom; at the abbey they got nothing but food and drink, Louis having apparently given it to be understood that he was “satisfied” with the larger sum which he had recently extorted from the abbot, and that they must exact nothing more. A marvellous experience which befell some of the sacrilegious spoilers at Redburn[149] probably sobered them somewhat, for they passed through Dunstable “without doing much harm.”[150] When, a few days later, they reached Mountsorel, they found that, so far as that castle was concerned, their work was done. The leaders of the besieging force had had timely warning from their scouts, and had withdrawn to Nottingham.[151]

Louis meanwhile had on Saturday, 29th April, marched from Farnham to Winchester, his rearguard chased by a party of Royalists from Windsor, who, however, failed to overtake it. The Marshal, after demolishing the castle as much as haste permitted, had evacuated the city, and the few Royalists left in it fled at the approach of the French. Louis stayed there five days, to put in train the restoration of the castle. On 4th May--Ascension Day--he left the completion of this work and the custody of the city to the Count of Nevers, and set out once more for London.[152] There he heard that the garrison of Dover had broken their truce, and chased and slain some of his men who had arrived at Dover after he left it. He stayed in London two nights and then went on to Dover, and on the Friday before Whit-Sunday, 12th May, set up his trebuchet before the castle, while his men built themselves huts all around in preparation for a renewal of the siege. Next day (Whitsun Eve) forty of his ships reappeared, seeking to enter the harbour; but a contrary wind drove them back to Calais, all except five, which made their way in together. On Monday, 15th, the other thirty-five came again from Calais. At the same time there hove in sight some eighty or more ships “great and small,” among them twenty “great ships armed and prepared for battle,” coming from Romney under Philip d’Aubigné and Nicolas Haringot. The small French transports, not daring to risk a meeting with these big vessels, fled towards Calais; twenty-seven of them however had advanced so far that they could not withdraw in time to avoid an encounter; eight of these were captured, the sailors and men-at-arms whom they carried were slain at once, and the knights imprisoned in the holds of the ships, “where they were uncomfortable enough.” The victorious English ships then anchored before the castle, thus effectually cutting off its besiegers from all chance of reinforcement by sea. Louis vented his rage by sending some of his men by land to burn Hythe and Romney; the “Wealdsmen” attacked them, but seemingly without success.[153]

While Louis was in London, the host which had gone to relieve Mountsorel moved eastward to Lincoln, at the urgent request of Hugh of Arras, who went in person to beg that they would all join him and his “Northern” friends at the siege of Lincoln Castle. He was, he said, almost on the point of taking it, and its capture would be a great advantage to the cause of Louis. After some debate the leaders consented, and the whole force marched to Lincoln and quartered itself in and around the city.[154] Tidings of this movement reached the Marshal on the Friday before Whit-Sunday {12 May}--the day on which Louis set up his trebuchet at Dover--when the council and the loyal barons were gathered round the King at Northampton for the approaching festival.[155] Hereupon, says his biographer, “God, Who supports, maintains, and counsels all loyal men, put into their hearts a marvellous counsel, of which came much good and much honour to them. List, then, the sum of the counsel with which God inspired the man chosen and renowned and trusted above them all. ‘Hearken,’ spoke William the Marshal, ‘loyal knights and all ye who are in fealty to the king! For God’s sake hearken to me, for what I have to say deserves a hearing. This day we bear the burden of arms to defend our fame, and for ourselves and our dear ones, our wives and children, and to keep our land in safety, and to win great honour, and for the peace of Holy Church, which these men have wronged and ill-used, and to gain remission and pardon of all our sins. Take heed then that there be no backsliders amongst us.’”[156] After this solemn exordium he put the situation clearly before his audience. Part of the enemies were sieging Lincoln Castle, but only a part; Louis was elsewhere, and “those who accompanied him had got themselves foolishly into a tangle.”[157] Here, then, was an opportunity not to be lightly thrown away. “For God’s sake, let us stake everything upon it! Remember that if we gain the victory, we shall increase our honour, and preserve for ourselves and our posterity the freedom which these men seek to take from us. We _will_ keep it. God wills us to defend it! Therefore every man must bestir himself to the utmost of his power, for the thing cannot be done else. There must be no gaps in our armed ranks; our advance upon the foe must be no mere threat; but we must fall upon them swiftly. God of His mercy has granted us the hour for vengeance upon those who are come hither to do us ill; let no man draw back!” The whole assembly “took heart and hope, strength and hardihood” from his words, and became eager to go forward at all costs.[158] So, with the unanimous consent of Gualo and the other members of the royal council, the Marshal called upon all loyal castellans and knights to muster at Newark on Whit-Monday, 15th May.[159] They came gladly, to the number of four hundred knights, near two hundred and fifty cross-bowmen, and so many sergeants and horsemen as might well make up for the small number of knights.[160] The leaders of the host were the two William Marshals, Bishop Peter of Winchester (who was “learned in the art of war”), the Earls of Chester, Ferrers, and Aumale, William d’Aubigny, John Marshal, William de Cantelupe with his son of the same name, Falkes de Bréauté, Thomas Basset, Robert de Vipont, Brian de Lisle, Geoffrey de Lucy, Philip d’Aubigné, “and others.”[161]

Next day arose a new peril, which recalls one of the incidents that preceded another battle at Lincoln, seventy-six years before. “The Normans who were in the host” went to the younger William Marshal and addressed him thus: “Fair sir, you were born in Normandy; you ought to know that it is the right of the Normans to strike the first blow in every battle. Take heed that we lose not our right.” Earl Ranulf of Chester, however--like his father in 1141--claimed the same privilege for himself, and bluntly declared that unless he were placed in the van, he would not go with the host, and they should have no help from him. The Earl Marshal and the other leaders were obliged to pacify him by granting his demand, on the understanding that the right of the Normans should not be thereby prejudiced for the future.[162] Three days were spent at Newark {Tues., 16 May}, as a breathing-time for men and horses and an opportunity for religious exercises to prepare the men for their task. On the third morning {Fri., 19 May}, after Mass, the Legate and clergy again excommunicated Louis by name, with all his accomplices and abettors, especially those who were sieging Lincoln castle, “together with the city of Lincoln and all its contents.” The Legate then gave plenary absolution to all who, having made a truthful confession, were about to take part in the expedition.[163] This done, the whole host flew to horse and arms.[164]

The Legate set out for Nottingham,[165] taking with him the young King. For the fighting men, the direct route would have been the Foss Way, which ran in an almost straight line from Newark to Lincoln. But it ran to the southernmost gate of the city, below the hill; and their aim was to reach the western side of the castle on the hill-top without passing through the city, which was in the hands of the enemy. They therefore fetched a compass to the northward as far as Torksey;[166] and there, or at Stow[167] hard by, they spent the night. On Saturday morning (May 20th), after Mass, they drew up in full array for their final march upon Lincoln.[168] Once more the Marshal bade them fight, “for honour or Paradise,” against the enemies of God and the Church. “God has given them into our hands; up and at them! The hour is come!” “And all who heard him bore themselves joyfully, as if they were going to a tournament.”[169] Chester led the van; the Marshal and his sons commanded the next division; Earl William of Salisbury the third, and Bishop Peter of Winchester the fourth, which consisted of cross-bowmen.[170] Another body of cross-bowmen--perhaps commanded by Falkes--seems to have formed an advanced guard which marched a mile in front of the rest of the host.[171]

The boundaries of medieval Lincoln were determined by those of the Roman city on the site of which it was built. They formed, roughly speaking, a parallelogram whose length from north to south was considerably greater than its width, and whose northern half stood on the summit of a steep and rocky hill whence the southern half sloped down almost to the bank of the river Witham; the whole was divided longitudinally by the Roman road known as Ermine Street. The city “above hill” represented the original Roman camp; to this the part “below hill” had been added in the later days of the Roman occupation. The wall wherewith, in the thirteenth century and for many centuries after, the whole was encompassed, followed in the main the outlines of the Roman enclosure thus enlarged. The castle, founded by William the Conqueror and partly reconstructed in the twelfth century, occupied the south-western angle of the first Roman city: it was thus enclosed on the north, east, and south within the later city, from which it was separated by a wide and deep ditch. This ditch was continued along its outer or western side; and on this side the walls of castle and city formed one continuous line, the wall being carried across the ditch at the north-western and south-western extremities of the castle enclosure. Immediately north of the ditch at the former of these two points of junction between the city wall and the castle wall, stood the West Gate of the city; whether there was also a gate at the southern junction point is not known. The castle had two main entrances; one on the east, towards the city; the other on the west side, towards the open country. The keep was on the south side. Beyond the western wall and ditch the plateau formed by the hill-top extended some little distance; and it was here that King Stephen had entrenched himself when he besieged the castle in 1141, leaving the bishop and citizens to watch the other three sides. The partisans of Louis seem not to have been sufficiently sure of the citizens to venture on following Stephen’s example; for they had evidently made no attempt to occupy the site of his encampment, but had set up all their machines and concentrated all their forces within the city, directing all their attacks upon the castle from thence, and taking no steps to prevent its garrison from communicating through the western sally-port with their friends outside.

The main road from Torksey and Stow to Lincoln now enters the city south of the castle; but there is a branch road connecting it at Burton with an old Roman way which runs from Kirton-in-Lindsey and enters Lincoln by the West Gate; and this appears to have been the way taken by the Royalists. At some distance from the gate they halted, and the Marshal sent forward his nephew John to open communications with the garrison.[172] On his way John met Dame Nicolaa’s lieutenant constable, Geoffrey de Serland, whom she had despatched from the castle secretly to tell the leaders of the relieving host how matters stood within, and that a “little door,” or “postern at the back”--that is, the small door of the western sally-port, by which no doubt Geoffrey himself had gone out--was already open to receive them.[173] With this welcome message John Marshal hastened back; he was seen and chased by some Frenchmen, but escaped unharmed.[174] Two of the English barons who were in the city, Robert Fitz-Walter and Saer de Quincy the Earl of Winchester, rode out to reconnoitre as soon as the Royalists’ approach was known. On their return they said: “These warriors come on in good order, but we are far more in number than they; let us go out to meet them at the ascent of the hill, and then we can catch them all like larks in a cage.” The Count of Perche, however, who was in command of the French troops, was too cautious to act upon a report so vague and went out himself with another of the French leaders, to count the enemies, as he said, “according to the custom of France.” He was, however, deceived in his reckoning; for each of the Royalist chieftains had two banners, one of which led his contingent in the fighting host while the other was with his baggage, so that the baggage, forming a separate group in the rear, looked like another army and was mistaken for such by the two Frenchmen, who went back doubting what was best to do. They finally decided to shut the city gates and thus, as they hoped, hold the city till they should have won the castle[175]; thinking that the English, with men and horses wearied from a long march, would not attempt to penetrate within the walls. When this movement came to the knowledge of the Marshal, he made it an argument for instant attack. “See, they retire behind their walls! The victory is ours already, when these men, ever foremost in tourney, hide themselves at our approach. Let us do the right, for God wills it!”[176]

It was easy to introduce troops into the castle by the western sally-port; but it would not be so easy to pass the whole relieving force through the castle into the city. Bishop Peter of Winchester, who according to the Marshal’s biographer “was the master in counselling our people that day,”[177] seems to have resolved on trying to ascertain for himself where a direct entrance into the city could be effected. He led his men up to the castle wall, bade them await him there, and with a single attendant entered the fortress. He found it greatly damaged by the long siege, and in such constant peril from the French mangonels and stone-casters, still actively at work, that its occupants begged him to withdraw from the great court into the shelter of the keep. Thence, after complimenting and encouraging the “good dame,”[178] he stole out, evidently by the small south door,[179] on a yet more hazardous reconnoitring expedition into the city, “wishing to see how it stood.”[180] Looking about him, he caught sight of a gate “which joined the walls of the city with those of the castle,” and which was “blocked with stone and cement.” This was apparently the West Gate of the city.[181] The reason for which it had been blocked, whether this was done by the French or (as is more probable) under orders from Nicolaa[182] at an earlier period of the war, is not difficult to guess. Lincoln had more gates than could easily be guarded all at once;[183] if one of them was rendered impassable, there was one less to watch and defend. The sequel implies that the “stone and cement” were not so put together as to form a wall of solid masonry; probably the door on the inner side of the gateway had been closed and the obstruction piled up, rather than built up, on the outer side; if so, it might be cleared away without its removal being noticed inside the city until the door was forced open.[184] In all likelihood Peter’s discovery of this possible entrance had really been made as he passed the outer side of the gate on his way to the castle, and the purpose of his daring venture was to learn whether its inner side was penetrable and unguarded. He found that it was so, and having made his way back safely to his friends, gave orders for the gate to be cleared out. His comrades of the host came to meet him joyously, “every man in the ranks singing as if the victory were already won”; Peter merrily told them that when they had gained possession of the city he should claim the bishop’s house for his own residence, as a reward for having prepared them a safe way of entry.[185]

Possibly, however, the lay leaders may have been unwilling to stake the safety of their enterprise solely on the judgement of their episcopal counsellor; for it seems that while Falkes de Bréauté, with his own followers and all the cross-bowmen, was sent into the castle, the main body of the host went round to the north gate--the Roman “Porta Nova,” “New Port,” now reduced to a single great arch with a smaller one at its side, but in the Marshal’s day probably still almost complete in the pristine strength of its solid Roman masonry, forming an arched passage flanked by two smaller passages, some twenty feet long,[186] and closed with heavy doors which the Royalists set to work to batter in.[187] The French party were plying their engines vigorously on the castle when suddenly they saw its walls and towers bristling with cross-bowmen; and “as in the twinkling of an eye” a shower of quarrels, aimed with deadly effect at the destriers of the besiegers, reduced many knights and barons of high rank among them to the condition of foot soldiers. The sight of their discomfiture tempted Falkes to make a dash from the eastern gate of the castle into their midst, with some of his personal followers; he was, however, quickly surrounded and captured, but was gallantly rescued by his men.[188] Bishop Peter meanwhile was protesting to the Marshal against the folly--as he deemed it--of trying to force an entrance elsewhere than at the “safe” place where, as he said, there was an opening in the wall ready for use, yet hidden from and unguarded by the enemy. “By my head! those men are wrong; they have not found the right way to get in. I will lead you to it; come with me.” “By God’s sword! hither, my helmet!” was the Marshal’s reply.[189] Peter however now held him back and proposed that before risking a general assault two men from each “battle” or division of the host should be sent to look around for ambushes.[190] This was done; but the Marshal was too impatient to await the result. He at once “put himself forward on his way,” calling his own men to the onset: “Forward! Now shall ye see your enemies vanquished in a few hours; shame to him who longer delays!” Again Peter tried to check him, begging him to wait till the whole host could be reunited and the attack made in full force. The aged warrior would not listen; “swifter than a merlin he struck spurs into his horse, so that all who were with him gathered hardihood as they beheld him.” A “valet” called after him that he was, after all, going without his helmet; “Stop here while I fetch it,” said the Marshal to his son. In a moment he was back again, “and when he had thus covered his head, he was goodly to look upon beyond all the rest--light in movement as a bird, hawk or eaglet.” “Hungry lion never rushed on its prey so hotly as the Marshal on his foes”; at the first onset he dashed three spears’ length into their midst, cutting his way through them and scattering them on all sides, while Bishop Peter followed shouting “God help the Marshal!”[191]

By this time the stubborn attack on the north gate had succeeded, and all the Royalist forces thus poured in at once upon the besiegers of the castle,[192] who, although numerically stronger, were unable to withstand their onset,[193] aided as it was by the murderous fire which Falkes’s cross-bowmen, from their vantage-ground on the castle wall, poured down upon the horses of the French knights, the animals falling “like stuck pigs” while the riders were captured without possibility of rescue.[194] The French force is said to have consisted of six hundred and eleven knights and full a thousand footmen; it is not quite clear whether this reckoning includes their English allies.[195] Yet, small as were the numbers engaged on both sides, the fight lasted from between seven and eight o’clock in the morning till nearly three in the afternoon.[196] It was protracted partly by the stubborn persistence of the two parties, who both alike felt that the destiny of England was involved in its result, and partly by the impossibility, in the steep and narrow streets of a city such as Lincoln, of bringing it to a decisive issue in one general encounter. It thus became a battle of the old-world epic type, full of separate incidents and individual encounters; and this peculiar character, together with the extraordinarily small amount of actual bloodshed and loss of life that took place in it, probably suggested the name afterwards given to by the victors--“the Tournament,” or as the word is commonly but in this case perhaps less accurately rendered, “Fair of Lincoln.”[197]

The first recorded incident was one of good omen for the Royalists. Some of them found the enemy’s chief engineer[198] working a stone-caster which hurled stones against one of the towers of the castle. Mistaking the new-comers for knights of his own party, he, all the more eagerly, placed a stone in his machine, but as he was giving the signal for its discharge they came up behind him and struck off his head.[199] The Marshal and the Earl of Salisbury “turned to the right, leaving a minster on their left,”[200] and came upon a cluster of enemies, one of whom, Robert of Ropsley, levelled his spear “to joust,” and struck that of Longsword with such force that it shivered into fragments; but the Marshal gave him such a blow between the shoulders that he fell to the ground “and crawled away to hide himself.” The fight swept onward almost to the brow of the hill on which the city was set, till on a level space near the great minster,[201] the French made a resolute stand under the direction of the Count of Perche.[202] He was only a youth, of scarce two and twenty years,[203] “handsome, tall, and noble-looking.”[204] He stood at bay as bravely as King Stephen had stood in somewhat like circumstances in the earlier battle of Lincoln; and for a while he and his men succeeded in checking the progress of the Royalists. By degrees, however, the French lost ground and began to fall back down the hill. Perche, with a few of his personal followers, alone kept his post, and was at last surrounded by almost the whole force of the English. They called upon him to surrender, but he refused with an oath, saying he would never yield to one of a race “who had been traitors to their king.”[205] Reginald Croc, a knight of Falkes’s household,[206] then levelled a spear at him and struck him in the eye. The Marshal, coming up at that moment, seized the bridle of the count’s horse, “and it seemed right, as the count was the chief man on the French side.” Perche dropped the bridle, took his sword in both hands, and struck with it on the Marshal’s helmet three blows in quick succession, “so mighty that they dinted it visibly,” and then suddenly fell from his horse. The Marshal thought he had fainted, “and feared that he himself should be blamed therefor.” “Dismount and take off his helmet,” said one of Perche’s men, William of Montigny, “for it hurts him; but I doubt he will stand up no more.” Croc’s spear had in fact pierced through the eye to the brain, and when the helmet was removed the friends and foes who crowded round saw that the gallant youth was dead.[207]

Perche’s comrades at once rushed down the hill[208] and rejoined the bulk of the French troops, to whom his heroism and the concentration of the English around his person had given a breathing-space of which they had made good use. They and their English allies had rallied in the lower town, and now came, in close array, up the hill, hoping to regain possession of its summit. Meanwhile the young Marshal had rejoined his father. “Are you hurt?” asked the Earl. “No, Sir.” “Forward then! This day we will conquer, or chase them from the field.” Attacked on their right flank by Chester and his “good folk” before they reached the hill-top, confronted when they did reach it by the Marshals, and shut in between the minster and the castle, the French, after another stubborn fight, were again driven down the slope; and this time they were chased right out of the city and through its southern gate, or Stone-Bow,[209] to Wigford Bridge.[210] There they made a last gallant stand, fighting with such desperate fury that “if God had spoken by thunder, He would not have been heard.” Their pursuers were no less daring and impetuous: William Bloet, the young Marshal’s standard-bearer, charged into the crowd on the bridge with such vehemence that he and his horse went sheer over into the river, only, however, to struggle out again with equal quickness and gallantry. Gradually the cry of “King’s men! King’s men!”[211] rose higher above the din. Saer de Quincy and his son Robert were taken; so was Robert FitzWalter; so were several other rebel barons;[212] at last the rest turned and fled across the suburb of Wigford by “the street which goes straight to the hospital”[213]--in other words, the whole length of the present High Street--till they reached the outer or furthermost gate of Lincoln.[214] This gate, known as the Great or Western Bar-Gate, protected the bridge by which the main road from Lincoln to the south crossed the great drain called the Sincil Dyke. Here the fugitives were checked by a double obstacle. The bar of the gate was so constructed that the gate closed of itself after every individual who passed in or out. Just as the foremost of them reached it, a cow tried to enter, and, the gate falling upon her, stuck fast, so that egress was altogether impossible till the animal was slain; and even then, as there was apparently no means of fixing the gate open, each man as he came up had to dismount and open it for himself.[215] The unhappy fugitives might, it seems, have been captured or even slain almost to a man, had their pursuers so willed it; but many of them were English, and the ties of blood restrained their kinsmen in the royalist host from carrying the pursuit to extremity.[216] Notwithstanding this forbearance, however, a large number of prisoners were captured.[217] Among these were nearly all the English barons who had sided with Louis;[218] no less than seven were taken by John Marshal, and several by Bishop Peter and his men;[219] forty-six in all are named by contemporary historians;[220] and the prisoners of knightly rank numbered three hundred,[221] besides many others of lesser degree. Those who escaped “stopped neither by night nor by day, in town or house, for they thought that on every hill-side and in every dale the bushes were all full of Marshals.”[222] Only three of the “great men” among the French--Simon of Poissy, Hugh the castellan of Arras, and Eustace de Merlinghem the constable of Boulogne--reached London with some two hundred knights. The foot-soldiers were nearly all slain by the country folk who came out “with swords and staves” to intercept their flight.[223] In the actual battle only five men had been slain; on one side the Count of Perche, two of his knights,[224] and a man-at-arms whom no one recognized; on the other, Perche’s slayer, Reginald Croc.[225]

Unhappily, the English sullied their victory by sacking Lincoln. Not content with seizing the baggage and valuable goods of the French nobles and the rebel barons, which they found piled up in waggons in some of the streets, they “despoiled the whole city, even to the uttermost farthing”; and on the strength of Gualo’s exhortation to treat the canons of the cathedral chapter as excommunicate (owing to their having been throughout the war in opposition to the King), they plundered every church, breaking open chests and presses and carrying off plate, jewels, vestments, and money; the precentor of the cathedral lost eleven thousand marks. Many women fled from the city with their children and household goods, and sought to escape in boats, but through their overcrowding and ignorance of rowing all the little vessels capsized, the occupants were drowned, and the goods became the prize of anyone who fished them up from the bottom of the river.[226] All these things were done after the Marshal had left the city. As soon as the fight was over he and the other leaders held a council to consider what they should do next. Some were for marching on London, some for trying to dislodge Louis from Dover. As they could not agree, the Marshal with his usual practical good sense bade them all go home and place their respective prisoners in safety, and meet him again, with the Legate, on a day which he named, at Chertsey,[227] or, according to another account, at Oxford.[228] He then, without stopping even to eat, hurried with his tidings of victory to the King and the Legate at Nottingham. Thither, next morning {_Trinity Sunday, 21 May_}, came news of another gain to the royal cause; the garrison of Mountsorel, whose constable, Henry de Braybroke, had gone with Saer de Quincy to Lincoln, had fled and left the castle deserted.[229] The Earl of Salisbury appears to have been sent to secure it for the King; two days later {23 May} an order was issued to him from Lincoln, in the King’s name, to deliver it to Earl Ranulf of Chester,[230] who forthwith razed it to the ground.[231]

On Thursday, 25th May,[232] the news of the Fair of Lincoln reached Louis in his camp before Dover. He took counsel with his friends; and they all agreed that he must raise the siege, concentrate in London, and send to France for reinforcements. Unwillingly he caused his trebuchet to be taken down, and prepared to withdraw, but determined to stay over Sunday 28th, “to see whether he would get any news.” On the Sunday “it was very clear at sea, and looking towards Calais they saw many ships with their sails set, whereof they rejoiced greatly.” Next day {29 May} the ships “came sailing over the sea right merrily, to the number of full six score.” The English, when they saw them, hoisted their sails and put to sea; the French set off in chase, but finding they could not catch them put about again and made straight for Dover. The English then put about likewise, overtook the hindermost ships of the French fleet, and captured eight of them; the rest got safe into the harbour, and were met by Louis on the beach. To his great disappointment and rage, however, he found that, except one large vessel in which were eighteen knights, they brought nothing but sailors, merchants, and men-at-arms. Next day {30 May} he sent them all back again, with two messengers charged with letters to his father. Then he set fire to “all the ships which were ashore before the haven,” and betook himself to Canterbury and thence to London, where he arrived on Thursday, 1st June.[233]

The Royalists meanwhile had advanced by way of Windsor and Staines to Chertsey;[234] thence they made secret overtures to some of the leading citizens of London for the surrender of the city. Tempted on the one hand by the promise of a confirmation of its liberties “under the King’s seal,” and terrified on the other hand by the fate of Lincoln, London was clearly beginning to waver; and Louis, on discovering these secret negotiations, could only secure himself in the city by closing all its gates save one and insisting upon a renewal of homage from the citizens to himself.[235] At the beginning of June the Archbishop of Tyre, who had come to Europe to preach a crusade, arrived in England from France, accompanied by the abbots of Citeaux, Clairvaux, and Pontigny, and endeavoured to reconcile the contending parties.[236] Several parleys were held,[237] and a draft treaty was actually prepared[238] and seems to have been discussed between four of Louis’s counsellors and four of Henry’s, who met, accompanied by twenty knights of each party, between Brentford and Hounslow,[239] on 13th June. But the meeting proved useless because Louis insisted upon including in the peace four clerks whose conduct had been, alike in an ecclesiastical and a political point of view, so outrageous that the Legate absolutely refused to admit them to any terms without previously consulting the Pope.[240] The unsuccessful mediators returned to France at the end of the month.[241]

Meanwhile Falkes de Bréauté had taken Lynn.[242] On 23rd June the sheriffs were ordered to publish the Charter in their shires and see that it was put in execution.[243] The King and his council then withdrew to Gloucester;[244] and it was probably during their temporary absence from the neighbourhood of London that Louis sent the Viscount of Melun and Eustace de Neville on a plundering raid into East Anglia, whence they returned laden with the spoils of the famous abbey of S. Edmund.[245]

This raid was evidently a desperate expedient for obtaining supplies. Cooped up in London, Louis and his men were in need of everything; and Philip Augustus shewed no inclination to send them help of any kind.[246] Months before, if we may believe the Marshal’s biographer, the French King, when he heard that John was dead, his son crowned, and the Marshal in charge of the realm, had declared that further effort was useless. “We shall take nothing in England now; that brave man’s good sense will defend the land--Louis has lost it. Mark my words! When the Marshal takes the matter in hand, we are undone.”[247] As Philip had from the outset refused to countenance his son’s enterprise openly, so now he connived at, rather than assisted, the efforts of his daughter-in-law, Blanche of Castille, to collect money and troops for Louis.[248] Blanche scoured the country in her husband’s behalf, pleading his cause so energetically that a contemporary says, “if those whom she enlisted had all gone to England in arms, they might have conquered the whole kingdom.”[249] The force which her efforts finally brought together at Calais numbered, however, only about a hundred--or at the utmost three hundred--knights.[250] Several times, while they lay encamped on the shore, some English ships sailed up to the harbour and discharged arrows at them; and once, at least, a great fight took place, in which the English were signally worsted. Another night the French actually crossed the Channel and anchored off Dover, intending to sail thence round to the mouth of the Thames; but in the morning, as they were about to set forth, a storm overtook them and drove them back panic-stricken to the coast of Flanders.[251]

On 4th July the King’s guardians issued from Gloucester a summons for a council to be held at Oxford on the 15th. It seems not to have actually met till a week later; and on 26th or 27th July the King and the Marshal returned to Gloucester, after issuing (22nd July) a summons for another assembly to be held at Oxford on 6th August.[252] The royal forces were increasing more and more. Two great nobles had joined them since Louis’s return to England--the Earl of Warren before 22nd June, and the Earl of Arundel before 14th July[253]--and nearly one hundred and fifty rebels submitted between the end of May and the beginning of August.[254] When the host re-assembled at Oxford[255] all was ready for the final struggle. From Oxford they moved to Reading, and thence to Farnham;[256] there, it seems, the leaders separated, the Legate and the King going northward again with one part towards London, while another part under the Earl Marshal and the justiciar made for the Kentish coast to prepare for its defence against the expected French fleet.

From Dover the Marshal summoned the men of the Cinque Ports to arm and assemble their ships at Sandwich. The aged warrior was eager to go forth in person and encounter the French at sea, but his men would not suffer it; he must stay on shore, they said, “for if it chanced that he were slain or captured, who then would defend the land?”[257] On S. Bartholomew’s eve {Wed., 23 Aug.} he, with the Earl of Warren, King John’s elder son Richard,[258] Philip d’Aubigné, and a host of other “good knights,” lay encamped near Canterbury. They “slept little,” for they all knew that the morrow might prove a day almost as momentous as that of Senlac. At early dawn {24 Aug.} they marched to Sandwich. The day broke clear and bright, with a “soft and pleasant” wind which soon brought into view the armament coming from Calais.[259] It consisted of some eighty vessels of various sizes;[260] ten of them were large ships of war, fully armed,[261] of which four were filled with knights and six with men-at-arms; the smaller vessels carried accoutrements and other goods.[262] Among the knights were some of the noblest and bravest men of France;[263] those of highest rank and fame, thirty-six in number, together with the treasure which Blanche was sending to her husband, were in the ship of Eustace the Monk, who seems to have been in command of the whole fleet.[264] The vessels were making for the mouth of the Thames,[265] and as they swept round Thanet in close array as if ready for a fight, Eustace’s ship leading,[266] their number and character could be plainly distinguished by the Royalists drawn up on the shore, as well as by the sailors who manned the English ships in Sandwich harbour.[267]

At the eleventh hour the Marshal’s plan of campaign all but broke down. The English fleet was ready; but it comprised only eighteen, or at the utmost twenty-two, ships of any size, with some smaller ones to the number of about twenty more;[268] and the sight of the enemy’s superior fleet struck such terror into the sailors that they lost their heads completely, left their ships with the sails all hoisted, and took refuge in their little boats.[269] Once more the Marshal appealed to them as only he could appeal. Again he offered to go with them; but again his own men forbade it.[270] Then by a characteristic exhortation he shamed the mariners out of their fears. “God has given us one victory over the French on land. Now they are coming again, to claim the country against Him. But He has power to help the good on sea as well as on shore,[271] and He will help His own. You have the advantage in the game; you will conquer the enemies of God!”[272] The impressionable sailors caught a new spirit from the landsmen who, fresh from their victory over superior numbers at Lincoln, were fearless of the risk of another encounter at similar odds.[273] One ship was quickly filled with the Marshal’s own followers, under his nephew John;[274] Richard the King’s son went on board another with a company of knights;[275] a third was occupied by Earl Warren’s men, the Earl himself remaining on shore with the Marshal;[276] Philip d’Aubigné probably commanded a contingent from the Channel Isles. Hubert de Burgh seems to have joined the muster by sea, coming from Dover in “a fine ship” of his own,[277] and to have taken the supreme command.

The skill and energy of the English sailors quickly atoned for their momentary panic. Though wind and tide were both against them,[278] they came up in the rear of the French fleet just as it reached the mouth of the estuary. For a moment the leading English ship--that of Hubert--seemed about to close with the enemy; then it suddenly shot forward, as if the commander’s purpose were not to give battle, but to avoid it.[279] On seeing this, the French shifted their sails, and with insulting cries of “_La hart! la hart!_”--a call with which huntsmen were wont to urge their hounds after the quarry--turned round to the attack, their line still headed by the ship of Eustace the Monk.[280] This was probably the largest and most formidable vessel of the French fleet; but it was overloaded; it carried, besides its freight of men and treasure, some valuable horses for Louis, and a trebuchet; and in consequence, it lay so deep in the water that the waves almost overflowed its deck. Sir Richard the King’s son laid his ship alongside it at once; Earl Warren’s men quickly brought up their ship on its other side. This latter ship was only a cog, or fishing vessel; but being light it stood high above the water, and its occupants were thus able to cast down potfuls of lime and stones on their adversaries’ heads, with blinding if not deadly effect.[281] Meanwhile the armed galleys of the English fleet, few though they were in number, were doing fatal execution on some of the other French ships, piercing them with their iron beaks and sinking them. Now, too, the French had the wind in their teeth, and it carried into their faces clouds of quicklime thrown up into the air by the English. Moreover, Philip d’Aubigné had with him a company of crossbowmen whose arrows wrought havoc among the enemy.[282] At length a man-at-arms from Guernsey, Reginald Payne, leaped from the deck of the cog to that of Eustace’s ship with such an impetus that in alighting he knocked down a French knight, William des Barres; in another moment he had prostrated a second foeman of rank and disabled a third; amid the confusion thus created all the fighting men on the cog followed him, and Eustace’s ship was captured with all on board.[283] On seeing this the remaining French ships took to flight. The victors chased them all the way back to Calais.[284] Only fifteen vessels--the largest in the fleet except that of Eustace--reached the harbour; of the lesser ones many were taken[285] and the rest sunk.[286] The slaughter was frightful; only thirty-two men, all of high rank and renown, were retained as prisoners on the ship which had belonged to Eustace, and even these were with difficulty saved by the English knights from the fury of the men-at-arms and sailors whose valour had won that great prize.[287] On every other captured vessel only a man or two were left alive; the rest were slain and “flung to the fishes for food.”[288]

When the fight and the chase were over and the prizes all towed into Sandwich, one prisoner was missed: Eustace the Monk. After a long search he was found hiding in the hold of his ship[289] from the universal hatred of which he knew himself to be the object, not only as the commander of the hostile fleet, but still more as a traitor of the deepest dye and a man of infamous character in every respect. He offered to give his captors ten thousand marks and to serve King Henry faithfully if they would grant him his life, “but it could not be.” One Stephen, a seaman of Winchelsea, who had sailed with him in earlier days when he was in the service of King John, flung in his face a recital of all his misdoings on land and sea, and bade him choose whether to have his head cut off on the ship’s deck or on the trebuchet. “Neither alternative was sweet,” says a contemporary writer with grim sarcasm; “anyway, they cut off his head. That was his festival day.”[290] The severed head was afterwards stuck on the point of a spear and carried round the neighbourhood, to shew the people, who had long lived in terror of the ruthless freebooter, that he was really dead.[291] The prisoners were sent to Dover to be put in ward in the castle under the charge of Hubert;[292] Philip d’Aubigné was despatched to carry news of the victory to the Legate and the King;[293] the Marshal stayed to superintend the division of the spoils. There was a large quantity of valuable things, money, plate, clothes, horses, arms, harness, provisions of various kinds; the Marshal contrived to distribute these in such a way that every man thought his own share better than that of his fellows, and yet to leave a residue which, with the hearty assent of the sailors, he devoted to the foundation of a hospital for “God’s poor,” in honour of the Saint on whose festival day the victory had been won.[294]

The Fair of Lincoln had, as a contemporary writer emphatically says, “destroyed the [rebel] barons.”[295] It had deprived Louis of the bulk of his English allies, and left the French conquest of England to be accomplished, if accomplished at all, solely by French hands. Had the French reinforcements effected a landing and defeated the Royalists in one battle, such a conquest might still have been possible. But when the tidings of that S. Bartholomew’s day reached Louis, he at once saw that his cause was lost.[296] While the Marshal’s division of the English host was in Kent, the other division, with the Legate and the young King, had encamped round about London, more closely than the Royalists had yet approached the capital since Louis’s return. Gualo seems to have placed Henry with his mother in the safe shelter of Windsor castle while he himself ventured as near to London as Kingston; one day, however, a report reached him that the French were sallying forth to attack him, whereupon he rode hastily back to Windsor. This French sally may have been the “very fine raid, wherein the lesser folk won much gain,” which is said to have been made about this time by the young Duke of Brittany. Again there was ineffectual talk of peace. Then the Legate proposed a siege of the city; but for this the lay leaders deemed their forces insufficient, and they retired each man to his own quarters. Another unsuccessful attempt at pacification, made by a Cistercian monk who was one of the Pope’s penitentiaries, was followed by a meeting of the Queen-mother and the Count of Nevers, between Windsor and London; “they spoke amicably, and parted amicably, but without making peace.” Louis was so conscious of peril that he removed from the bishop’s house to the Tower, “to be more in safety.”[297] The news of the battle of Sandwich reached him late on the evening of Saturday, 26th August. On Monday, 28th, Robert of Dreux went under a safe-conduct from the King to speak with the Marshal at Rochester; next day one of the newly-captured French knights, Robert de Courtenay, was allowed to go to London to speak with Louis, Dreux remaining as a hostage in his stead.[298] After consulting with Courtenay and others, Louis decided to ask for a parley with William the Marshal in person.[299]

William took counsel with the other Royalists; “and there were some who spoke rightly bravely, though they had kept away from the coast in the hour of need.” These men said: “We do not want to conciliate Louis. The only parley we want is a siege of London.” But the valiant men who had been in the fight were wiser; they besought the Marshal to get the French out of the country “and not to let lack of money be a hindrance, for they would help him to the utmost of their power, with their hearts and bodies and possessions.” He therefore agreed to go and parley with Louis.[300] He took with him, however, all the Royalists who had accompanied him into Kent; and the whole English host, thus reunited, now blockaded the city by land, while on 1st September the “barons” of the Cinque Ports were bidden to bring all their ships to the mouth of the Thames for the King’s service,[301] thus cutting off the capital from all chance of communication by sea. It was obvious that if Louis did not make terms at once, he would speedily be starved into unconditional surrender.[302] He took a course which was not only safer, but also more honourable both for himself and his adversaries, when he met the Marshal and the Justiciar in conference outside London {5 Sept.}. He frankly committed himself into their hands and those of the Legate, requesting them to dictate their own terms, on the sole condition that those terms should be such as would neither dishonour him nor offend his companions in arms.[303]

The Marshal and the Justiciar returned to Windsor, and Louis to London. From that night--Tuesday, 5th September--till Saturday, 9th, he waited in vain for their expected propositions; then, on the advice of his barons, he determined to make a sally early next morning and try to cut his way out. Late on the Saturday night {9 Sept.}, however, as they were about to separate and make their preparations for the morrow’s venture, a letter was brought to him from the Marshal asking for a day’s truce and requesting that Hugh de Malaunay might be sent to speak with the Marshal and the council. Both these requests Louis granted. A parley was then fixed for Tuesday (12th September), and a prolongation of the truce till Thursday (14th) was guaranteed by the Queen, the two William Marshals, the Earls of Salisbury, Warren, and Arundel, and some other magnates. Malaunay returned on Monday, 11th, and “told Louis what he had got.”[304] It was evidently something of great importance, for Louis at once “summoned his whole council, and the barons of England who held with him, and the citizens, and asked their advice upon it; and they all approved it.”[305]