He was away, a splendid and furious figure, with many thousand horses trampling at his heels. The iron ranks roared, and rocked and thundered. Those who watched saw a tossing sea of horses’ heads, a whirl of hoofs tearing the grass, a mist of slanted spears, a confusion of grotesque heads bending behind painted shields. The mass plunged in on the Londoners like a rock that falls with a deep sob into the sea. There was no submerging of that mass of steel, and flesh, and leather. It went in and through as a fire leaps through dry corn, terrible in its red ruin, unquenchable and splendid.
Marpasse, on her waggon, caught her breath, and held it. Simon’s left wing was wavering. Its spears went down in long swathes, and did not rise again. Black puffs of panic started out from the rear of the shaken mass, and spread like smoke over the green hillside.
“The Londoners have had enough! The fools always suffered from too much tongue. Dirty dogs, run, run, the devil is at your heels.”
She had hold of Denise’s arm, and Denise drew her breath in with a short, sharp sound, for Marpasse’s nails had made blood marks under the skin. But Marpasse never so much as noticed that she had hurt Denise. Her heart was a man’s heart as she watched the Earl’s left wing streaming away in rout with the mailed knights and men-at-arms scudding through it, and spearing the burghers as they ran. Away down the slope of Offham Hill, and across the level towards Hamsey and Barcombe went the tide of slaughter. The flying Londoners trailed a fatal lure for Edward the Prince that morning. The paradox proved true in the main, that by running away they won Earl Simon the battle, for Edward hunted them for a league and a half, wiping out the insults they had thrown at his mother. And while he trampled the Londoners into the grass, and drove many of them into the river, Earl Simon won the battle of Lewes, and taught Prince Edward a lesson in the self-restraint of war.
The reckless assurance that possessed the King’s army betrayed itself in an incident that followed the routing of Simon’s left wing. A crowd of women had followed on the heels of Edward’s lords and gentlemen, their lovers of the night before. The women had come out prepared to enjoy the battle as a spectacle, and perhaps to gain their share of the plunder. Some of them were mounted on mules and palfreys, others went on foot. And no sooner had the Londoners been driven off the field than these bona-robas came laughing and shouting up the hill, waving their kerchiefs and making a great to do. Most of them followed in the track of Prince Edward’s victorious banners, though a few spread themselves abroad to plunder the dead.
Marpasse and Denise had a distant view of all that happened after the flight of the Londoners down Offham Hill. They saw the massive centres of the two hosts come to grips, and stand like two bulls with locked horns, neither able to budge the other. Then Earl Simon’s genius gleamed out. Reinforcing his right wing with the reserve, he fell upon the left of the royal army under Richard, King of the Romans, crushed and scattered it in rout. Turning, he fell furiously with his flushed troops on the exposed flank of the King’s centre, broke through their ranks, and gave Gloucester’s men their opportunity.
From that wild mêlée the royal centre streamed away like ragged clouds driven by the wind. The green hillsides were covered with savage and furious figures, charging, and counter-charging with a riot of colour and glittering harness that sank slowly towards Lewes town. Henry, who had had his horse killed under him, and was wounded, was dragged away in the thick of a knot of desperate men, and carried off at a gallop to the Priory of St. Pancras. The battle was over as a struggle between two great masses of men. It dwindled into a series of scattered episodes, and of wild scuffles that rose suddenly like small dust storms, and then dispersed. A few of the sturdier spirits fought it out before they surrendered, happier in their valour than the King of the Romans who took refuge in a windmill and was besieged by a mocking and exultant mob till he delivered up his sword to Sir John de Befs. The fighting flowed in scattered trickles down to Lewes town, the west gate was taken by assault, though the King’s men held out in the castle and in the Priory of St. Pancras.
Now those about De Montfort’s standard were so taken up with watching the rout of the King’s army that they were caught open-mouthed when one of the last episodes burst on them like a thunderclap. There was a shout, the scream of a trumpet, a quivering of the earth under the thundering hoofs of galloping cavalry. Prince Edward was riding back from the slaughter of the Londoners, assuming the battle won, having spent precious hours in hunting down mere lads amid the windings of the Ouse. He and his men burst in among the waggons and the baggage, hot and bloody, their horses covered with sweat. And since Simon’s standard and litter were there, they thought they had him in their hands.
Young William le Blund was cut down under De Montfort’s banner, and his men slain and scattered. The servants and camp-followers fluttered and flew like frightened chickens in a farmyard. De Montfort’s litter was overturned, and the London merchants dragged out by the heels, and put to the sword despite their babblings and their protestations. It was shouted abroad that Simon was hiding somewhere amid the baggage, and the camp was turned into chaos, men tearing the loads out of the waggons, thrusting their swords into trusses of fodder, yelping like dogs about a fox’s hole. The women who had followed them shared in the scramble. And since that traitor Simon was not to be found, the whole rout took to plundering the baggage, not troubling to discover that the battle had been lost down by Lewes town.
Marpasse had dragged Denise out of the empty waggon, and set to at once to pull bales out of a cart.