The battle had commenced with an almost simultaneous flight of arrows on each side. For a long time De Guader acted stubbornly on the defensive. His only chance was to keep the king's forces at bay along the Devil's Dyke. But the line to be guarded was very long, and the number of the foe enabled them to attack many points at once.
He stood with his standard and his cavalry on the high ground towards Beachamwell, where alone they had any chance to manœuvre; but down in the fens towards Fouldon the fierce clashing of axe on spear, the clang of swords on buckler and mail, the whiz of arrows and the sharp twanging of bows mingled strangely with the shrill screaming of frightened waterfowl; and the wild shouts of the combatants frightened many a skein of mallards and plovers in their reedy haunts, from which they rose on whirring wings, with clamorous shrieks of fear.
Alike on the heath and in the fen, Normans were striving with Normans, and Saxons with Saxons, while the Bretons fought with the courage of desperation, well knowing that not only ruin, but the most terrible tortures and mutilation awaited their defeat.
Time after time the assailants strove to throw bridges across the dyke, and more than once succeeded in fixing their grappling-irons upon the rampart.
Time after time they were beaten back, leaving so many dead and dying behind them that the bodies of their friends might almost have served for a bridge.
But numbers prevailed at length. There came an hour when De Guader's archers and slingers, thinned by the continuous iron hail of arrows and quarrels to which they had been unceasingly exposed, no longer sufficed to guard the extended line of the rampart. While they were defending one hotly-contested point, the enemy forced another, and before they were well aware of their misfortune, a large body of knights had gained the eastern side of the dyke.
De Guader instantly formed his cavalry and led them to the charge, with the cry of 'St. Nicholas for Guader!' and the ground shook beneath the thundering feet of the destriers.
'Dex Aie et Notre Dame!' shouted the warlike bishop, who led the foe, and the mailed hosts closed with a crash that was heard by the warders on the walls of the new castle that William de Warrenne was building at Castle Acre.
But when De Guader and his followers had hewn their way through the thick squadron that met them, a fresh body stood ready for them, and further hosts were pouring across the dyke.
The odds were so overwhelming, that the East Anglian earl was forced to fall back; an awful retreat, for his troops were harassed in the rear by the remnant of the band they had just charged.