Of all the men of rank who fought in the battle few fell. Indeed, only two are mentioned by name—Richard, surnamed Crocus, and the Count de Perche—one on the winning, the other on the losing side. Richard, who was Falco’s brave knight, was carried by his companions to Croxton and laid with all honour in the abbey. The Count de Perche, whose comrades-in-arms were slain, or taken, or fled, and who, as an excommunicated man, could not, of course, be laid in consecrated ground, was interred in the orchard of the hospital of St. Giles, founded by Bishop Remigius outside the walls of Lincoln as a house of refuge for decayed priests.
And so ended the battle of Lincoln in a victory of which Pembroke might well and justly be proud. It not only overthrew the army on which Louis relied for success in his enterprise, but it utterly undid all the work which he had been doing in England since that June day when he rode into London amidst the cheers of an unreasoning multitude.
As for the feudal magnates who had offered him a crown which was not theirs to give, and who had done him homage as their sovereign, they were no longer in a position to aid him, even if they had been so inclined, but captives at the mercy of a king whose father they had hunted to death, and whose inheritance they had attempted to give to a stranger. Besides Robert Fitzwalter and the Anglo-Norman earls and barons, three hundred knights and a multitude of men holding inferior rank were prisoners.
Moreover, the spoil was regarded as something marvellous, and the English, remembering the multitudinous articles of value that fell into their hands that day as booty, and the ease with which they had obtained it, though so much the weaker party, were long in the habit of talking jocularly of that very memorable Saturday in the Whitsuntide of the year 1217, and with grim humour describing the battle as “Lincoln Fair.”
CHAPTER LIV
AN AWKWARD PREDICAMENT
WHEN the army of the Count de Perche had been routed at Lincoln during Whitsuntide, and the armament of Eustace the Monk destroyed at the mouth of the Thames, on St. Bartholomew’s Day, the position of Prince Louis became desperate, and he felt infinitely more eager to get out of England without dishonour than he had felt to invade it a year earlier. But this proved no easy business; and the prince had to pass several months of such intense anxiety as he was little prepared to experience.
On hearing of the catastrophe of Lincoln, Louis immediately abandoned the siege of Dover, and made for London, perhaps still hoping against hope. But even in the capital, which had been his stronghold, he soon discovered that he was the reverse of secure. Plots and conspiracies to drive out the French were almost every week brought to light, and countenanced by many who had once shouted most loudly, “All hail, Lord Louis!” Constantine Fitzarnulph, indeed, continued true to the end; but, as a body, the rich citizens were most anxious to get out of the scrape into which they had been beguiled by the confederate barons who at Lincoln had surrendered like so many sheep.
Such being the state of affairs, Louis never knew what a day might bring forth; and he became somewhat apprehensive of consequences, as he informed Philip Augustus by letter, saying, at the same time, “Our losses are brought on by God more than by man.”
The King of France, somewhat alarmed, summoned the messengers of Louis to his presence.
“Does William Marshal still live?” asked he.