THE BARONS' WAR
The Norman Conquest was, to the English body politic, like one of
those powerful drugs which seriously disorder the constitution for the
time, but if the patient has strength to bear the treatment do him
permanent good. The Barons' War was, as it were, the last feverish
fit resulting from the Conquest. The Normans, though they had adopted
French ideas and speech, were in race closely akin to the Anglo-Danes;
and the fusion between them was hastened by the accession of the house
of Anjou to the throne. The Conqueror and his sons had to a certain
extent identified themselves with England, leaning for support against
the turbulent Norman barons upon their English subjects. Henry II.,
though he did great things for England as a wise legislator and strong
administrator, was distinctly a foreigner. His father was French, his
wife was French, his ambition was to dominate France. Henry III.,
without his grandfather's strong qualities for both good and evil, was
still more completely un-English. His confidence was given only to
foreigners, to the Poitevin kindred of his mother, to the Provençal
and Savoyard kindred of his wife, never to Englishmen. He fleeced the
nation and the church beyond endurance to enrich foreign favourites,
to satisfy the Pope, to further schemes of vague ambition alien, if
not hostile, to English interests. Naturally strong opposition was
roused, which pervaded the nation generally, and was headed by the
greatest of the nobles and the most conspicuous prelates who were not
foreign intruders. Their chief, Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester,
though French by birth, had inherited a great station from his English
mother, and was as thorough an English patriot as was in that age
possible. The barons at length forced upon the king changes in his
government, which amounted to a temporary superseding of the royal
authority. The king of course strove to free himself from restraint:
and desultory hostilities followed, which led to an agreement to refer
the matters in dispute to the arbitration of the king of France. The
high reputation of Saint Louis seems to have blinded the barons to
the fact that he was on principle a steady upholder of royal power.
His award was completely in Henry's favour, and the appeal was most
injurious to the barons' cause. They must either abandon all that they
had been contending for, or repudiate the judgment they had themselves
accepted beforehand. The former evil was the worse of the two: they
chose war.
The decisive struggle took place at Lewes in Sussex, which the king
had made his headquarters, as being the seat of earl Warrenne, his
brother-in-law and most powerful supporter. Montfort marched to
Fletching, some nine miles from Lewes, whence he despatched the bishops
of London and Worcester to attempt to come to terms with the king. The
royalist party were far too confident to listen to any compromise;
probably they were ignorant of Montfort's strength, for they did
not even send out scouts to watch his movements. On receiving the
contemptuous defiance of the king the barons resolved to march before
daylight next morning (May 14, 1264). Religious feeling ran high in
their camp: earl Simon exhorted all his followers to confess their sins
before the battle, and the bishop of Worcester solemnly absolved and
blessed the kneeling host, after which all put a white cross on breast
and back, as a token that they were going to war for the right. The
army advanced unopposed and unobserved, till they came up on the great
ridge of the South Downs, whence they could see Lewes, about two miles
off. Here a halt was made, to form order of battle, before beginning
the descent. The Londoners, a numerous body and zealous in the cause,
but little trained to war, were on the left. Montfort's sons commanded
the right, the earl of Gloucester the centre. Montfort himself was
at the head of a fourth division, which was either in reserve, or on
the right centre. Modern writers seem agreed that it was in reserve,
though the contemporary authorities do not say so expressly: apparently
they assume it, because the regular mediæval practice was to divide
into three "battles."[8] If Montfort really did so organise his line of
battle, he was in advance of his contemporaries, and most thoroughly
deserved his victory. The earl is credited with a rather puerile device
by way of deceiving the enemy. He had injured his leg some time before,
and had been obliged to travel in some kind of carriage,[9] or horse
litter. This had accompanied him so far: he now left it behind on the
ridge of the downs, with the baggage of the army, under a guard; and it
is suggested that he did this in order to make the royalists think he
had stayed there in person, unable to ride.
The barons' army was approaching Lewes from the north-west. The tidal
river Ouse half encircles the town; coming from the north it bends
round the east side, where the bridge was and is, and then flows
southwards to the sea, but at that date the ground to the south of
the town was more or less flooded every tide. On the north edge of
the town is the castle, on the south the large priory of St. Pancras,
which was the king's headquarters. From the height where Montfort
left his baggage a well-marked ridge runs southwards, falling almost
to the level of the plain two miles due west of Lewes. South of this
the ground again rises in a sort of hog's back on which stand two
wind-mills, bearing the name of Kingstone mills: the present Brighton
road runs through the gap. East of the ridge is a hollow, large enough
to hold the present race-course, and beyond this is a gentler slope,
straight down to Lewes, which is hollowed out in its lower part, so as
to divide it into two, the easternmost portion leading straight to the
castle.
On the alarm being given the royalist army assembled in all haste, in
the usual three divisions, of which prince Edward, the king's eldest
son, commanded the right; the king in person was in the centre; the
left was under his brother Richard, earl of Cornwall, the titular
king of the Romans.[10] The prince, issuing from the castle, found
himself opposed to the Londoners who formed Montfort's left wing,
and who seem to have been somewhat in advance. With youthful zeal he
charged them at once, and put them to flight. Some writers say that
he selected the Londoners for attack, because of his eagerness to
avenge the insults offered to his mother in passing through London a
little while before: and it is perfectly possible that this animosity
led him to pursue them, as in fact he did, several miles, thereby
losing the battle: but it is obvious that he had no time to select his
opponents, even if the arrangement which committed the right wing to
his leadership had allowed it. Gloucester with the centre came down
the other part of the slope leading straight to the town, and thus
encountered the king: of this there can be no reasonable doubt, or
that the king after an obstinate conflict was driven into the priory.
But it seems to be generally assumed that Henry and Guy de Montfort
led their wing down the ridge which runs southwards, and that Richard
of Cornwall met them at the bottom. The slope is extremely steep for
a mediæval force of mounted horsemen in order of battle; moreover
to do this would have left a very dangerous gap between the right
and centre. It seems more probable that Montfort's right descended
straight on Lewes in close proximity to the centre. However this may
be, the right wing encountered the earl of Cornwall's troops, and
could make no impression on them, until Montfort supported his sons
with his own division. Then the king of the Romans was routed, and
himself took refuge in a wind-mill, doubtless on the spot now known as
Kingstone,[11] where he eventually surrendered. By this time the king's
own division had also been broken, and though part escaped into the
priory, most part of them were cut off from both it and the castle,
and were slaughtered in the streets of the town. The only hope of
retrieving even partially the fortunes of the day lay in the prince,
who after pursuing the Londoners to his heart's content, had caught
sight on his return of Montfort's carriage, and assuming that the earl
was lying helpless in it, made a dash to seize him and the baggage. The
carriage however contained three citizens of London who had entered
into some plot against Montfort, and had been carried off as prisoners
and left there for safety; but in the confusion of the sudden onslaught
the poor citizens were killed by their own friends. By the time
prince Edward had got back to Lewes it was growing dark; many of his
companions, including earl Warrenne himself, seeing that all was lost,
fled over the bridge, which soon became a scene of frightful confusion,
hundreds being drowned in the river, or forced into the tidal mud and
there suffocated.
The foregoing account of the battle of Lewes is partly conjectural:
the chroniclers are as usual wanting in precision of language, and
not altogether in accord; and there is always room for doubt as to
the identification of localities vaguely described. It agrees with
the conformation of the ground, and with the ascertained facts:
particularly it explains the king being driven into the priory, and
the earl of Cornwall into a wind-mill. With the royal right wing gone,
after the prince had dashed on the Londoners, Gloucester would have had
no real difficulty in pressing the king's right, so as to cut him off
from the castle, which would be an obvious advantage. Again Montfort's
own troops, whether in the right centre or in the second line, would
naturally have come down on Richard of Cornwall's right, and separated
him from the king, and unless the story of Richard's barricading
himself in a wind-mill is altogether an invention, which there is not
the slightest reason to imagine, it could only have been the Kingstone
mill. Wind-mills, beyond most things, remain for centuries on the same
spot.
The Barons' War is the only occasion in English history, except the
great civil war of the seventeenth century, in which a national party
in arms against the crown won a great victory in the field, and became
dominant in consequence, at least temporarily. It is an interesting
coincidence that the blunder which lost Lewes, the eagerness of a
youthful prince to pursue his routed opponents, regardless of the
general fate of the battle, should have been repeated, not once only,
by his descendant four centuries later. The hastiness of Rupert
prevented Edgehill from being a victory, and definitely lost Naseby,
the final battle of the war. Otherwise Lewes has no great military
interest. It exhibits the disastrous results to a defeated army of
having a river in its rear, and (possibly) the value of a reserve.
But the two armies were alike in equipment, in straightforward hard
fighting all along the line, in the preponderance of mailed horsemen.
Of missile weapons we hear nothing, except that _balistarii_ assisted
in defeating Richard of Cornwall: the word is often used to denote
cross-bowmen, and probably has that meaning here. The strange thing is
that there should be no trace of the archers, who only thirty years
later played an important part at Falkirk.
The battle of Lewes made Montfort master of England, and gave him
the opportunity of summoning the famous assembly, to which for the
first time the towns sent representatives. His rule was not very
successful: hampered as he was by the natural hostility of the king
and his adherents, and by the selfish jealousy of some of his own
party, he would have been more than human if he had overcome all his
difficulties, and laid himself open to no imputations of personal love
of power. The fact that he had the king in his hands, virtually a
prisoner, made his position especially difficult. So long as the king
was in his power, he could not expect the royalists to acquiesce in
his new policy: to let him go was to give up his one safeguard. The
earl of Gloucester, the most powerful of his supporters, broke away
from him, chiefly out of personal jealousy. Earl Warrenne and others
of the fugitives from Lewes landed in South Wales with a strong force
in the spring of 1265. Montfort was at Hereford, trying to quiet the
disordered marches of Wales, the king and prince Edward with him. From
Hereford the prince made his escape on May 28, and became naturally the
head of the royalist party. Bristol, Gloucester, Worcester fell into
the hands of prince Edward; the earl was unable to cross the Severn,
and was obliged to wait until his second son Simon could bring an army
to his assistance. Simon had been besieging Pevensey, and was a long
time in reaching Kenilworth, his father's principal stronghold. The
castle was too small to contain his troops, and Simon with incredible
carelessness allowed them to remain outside without keeping any guard,
apparently for two or three days at least, since Edward at Worcester
had time to hear of it, it is said through a female spy. On the night
of July 31, Edward marched rapidly from Worcester, and completely
surprised young Simon's forces, capturing several important prisoners
and all the baggage. Simon himself escaped into the castle, but he and
his army were utterly lost to his father's cause.
On the same day the earl of Leicester left Hereford, and crossing
the Severn in boats camped some miles to the south of Worcester. He
probably had heard that his son had reached Kenilworth, and may either
have purposed to attack prince Edward, while, as he might expect,
his son was approaching the prince from another quarter, or simply
to effect a junction with his son. Edward had taken great pains,
apparently with success, to let no fugitives escape from Kenilworth:
for the earl never heard of his son's overthrow. The exact times are
somewhat differently given by the various authorities, but it is quite
certain that Montfort was in Evesham early on August 4, and that Edward
knew of his movements and had time to anticipate him. One story is that
the king, who was still with him, insisted on stopping at Evesham on
the evening of the 3rd, that he might sup in the abbey and hear mass
there next morning, a request with which the earl could not decently
refuse to comply without a strong motive, which, ignorant as he was
of the disaster at Kenilworth, he could not have. The king's love of
ease, and of devotion, would account for this well enough: that he
did it in concert with his son, in order to delay Montfort, is not
credible, for in that case Edward might have saved some miles of a hard
march. The prince, on ascertaining that the earl had moved from his
camp at Kempsey south of Worcester, in the direction of Kenilworth,
formed a plan for cutting him off.
[Illustration:
_Map III._
_Battle of Evesham._
(_4th. Aug. 1265_)]
Evesham stands on the north bank of the Avon, at the bottom of a loop
some two miles deep and one wide. In the thirteenth century the banks
were marshy, and there was no bridge for a long distance, except one at
Evesham leading to the hamlet of Bengeworth on the east of the loop.
Over the high ground known as Green Hill, rising above the town and
filling the north part of the loop, ran the direct road from Worcester,
crossing the Avon by a ford[12] at Offenham, two miles above Evesham.
By this road prince Edward set part of his forces, including probably
all his foot-soldiers, to march in the night of August 3, in pursuit
of Leicester, entrusting the command to his new supporter the earl of
Gloucester. He himself started with a large body of horsemen on the
north road, so that his purpose might not be detected, then cutting
across country to the eastward reached the ford on the Avon at Prior's
Cleeve, some miles above Evesham, early on the 4th. As the road from
Evesham to Kenilworth passes near Prior's Cleeve on the left bank, he
hoped thus to intercept the earl in front, while Gloucester pressed on
his rear. Finding that there was no sign of Montfort's approach, he
descended the left bank as far as Offenham: thence he despatched Roger
Mortimer with a detachment to hold the bridge at Bengeworth and prevent
the earl escaping that way, and himself recrossed the Avon and occupied
Green Hill.[13]
When troops were first seen from Evesham on the slopes above, it
was supposed that they were young Montfort's army come to join his
father: for among the banners that waved over the prince's ranks
were those captured at Kenilworth. "It is my son," said the old
earl, "nevertheless go up and look, lest we be deceived." The earl's
barber, Nicholas, ascended the bell-tower of the abbey, and soon
detected the banners of the prince and his supporters, and presently
saw Gloucester's forces come up the western side of the hill from the
road along the Avon. The earl went up to see for himself, but he knew
that he was ruined: the only road of escape for his army must by this
time have been almost barred by Mortimer, and his men were not even
formed for march. Individuals might yet escape by swimming the Avon,
or dashing across the bridge before Mortimer arrived, but for the main
body the only way lay through the hostile army, outnumbering his by
three or four to one. "God have mercy on our souls," he exclaimed,
"for our bodies are the enemy's." The rest of the story cannot be told
better than in Professor Prothero's words.
"His friends urged him to fly, but the thought of flight for himself
was not in his mind. A natural flash of anger burst forth in the remark
that it was the folly of his own son which had brought him to this
pass. Nevertheless he endeavoured to persuade his eldest son Henry, his
old comrade Hugh Despenser, and others to fly while there was yet time,
and maintain the good cause when fortune should smile again. But one
and all refused to desert him, preferring not to live if their leader
died. 'Come then,' he said, 'and let us die like men; for we have
fasted here and we shall breakfast in heaven.' His troops were hastily
shriven by the aged bishop of Worcester, who had performed the same
office a year before upon a happier field. Then he led them out against
the enemy, with the white cross again upon their shoulders, in as
close order as he could. In the midst of them was the king, for Simon
seems to the last to have cherished a faint hope of cutting his way
through his adversaries; and as at Lewes, the possession of the royal
person was everything to him. As they neared the hill, prince Edward's
troops, who had been in no hurry to leave their point of vantage, began
to descend upon them. Simon's heart was struck with admiration of the
fair array before him, so different from that which he had met a year
before; his soldierly pride told him to whom their skill was due. 'By
the arm of St. James,' he cried, 'they come on well; they learnt that
not of themselves but of me.'
"On the south-western slope of Green Hill there is a small valley or
combe; in this hollow the chief struggle raged. On the further side,
in the grounds of a private house, stands the obelisk, which marks the
spot where, according to tradition, Simon de Montfort fell. Towards
the higher part of the combe is a spring, still called Montfort's
Well, which, on the day of the battle, is said to have run with blood.
Prince Edward began the fray, and while the earl was engaged with him,
Gloucester came up with a second body on his left, so that he was soon
surrounded. The Welsh infantry, poor, half-armed troops, fled at once,
and were cut down in the neighbouring gardens by Mortimer's forces,
which must now have been advancing from the rear. Simon's horse was
killed under him; his eldest son was among the first to fall. When
this was told him, he cried, 'Is it so? then indeed is it time for me
to die;' and rushing upon the enemy with redoubled fury, and wielding
his sword with both his hands, the old warrior laid about him with so
terrific force, that had there been but half-a-dozen more like himself,
says one who saw the fight, he would have turned the tide of battle.
As it was he nearly gained the crest of the hill. But it was not to
be. For a while he stood 'like a tower,' but at length a foot-soldier,
lifting up his coat of mail, pierced him in the back, and, with the
words _Dieu merci_ on his lips, he fell. Then the battle became a
butchery. No quarter was asked or given. The struggle lasted for about
two hours in the early summer morning, and then all was over.
"Of the horrid cruelties practised by the victors on the body of their
greatest foe it is better not to speak. The gallant old man lay, with
the few who remained faithful to him and to his cause, dead upon the
field, and with him the curtain seemed to fall upon all that was free
and noble in the land. The tempests which raged throughout the country
that day were remarked as shadowing forth the grief of heaven. The
accompanying darkness, which was so thick that in some places the
monks could no longer see to chant their prayers, was nothing to that
which must have fallen on many when they heard of the death of their
protector. But he had not lived in vain. England had learnt a lesson
from him, and had seen glimpses of what might be; and a retributive
justice brought his principles to life again through the very hands
which had destroyed him."
It is a coincidence that Montfort, whose victory at Lewes was made so
complete by the royalists having the Ouse behind them to cut off their
flight, should have himself been destroyed by being caught in the same
trap. He did not however wilfully commit the blunder of fighting with a
river at his back: his ruin was due to the overthrow which his son had
incurred by his own folly at Kenilworth, and to the skill with which
the prince utilised his very superior information. Edward seems indeed
to have developed in these few months from a headstrong boy into a
general of exceptional power for his age. At Lewes he threw away a
fair chance by his impetuosity, while Montfort, employing his inferior
numbers to the best advantage, was securing the victory behind him. At
Evesham he so used his opportunities that the earl, who had given him
that severe lesson, had no scope for generalship: he could only fight
and die as a brave man should.