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Sunday October 26, 2008

The king and his followers had barely mounted and armed and issued from the town of Lewes, when they saw the baronial army coming down upon them. But they had just time to form up in three " battles" before the conflict began. Knighton informs us that the king had originally organised his troops into four corps (like Earl Simon), but that the whole of the fourth division had been left behind to garrison Tunbridge, so that the Royalists had no reserve.¹⁰ Perhaps Henry might have told off other troops to play that part had he been granted time to think. But he was completely taken by surprise, and considered himself lucky to be able to form any battle-order at all. His right division was led by his heir, Prince Edward, who was accompanied by his foreign half-uncles, William de Valence and Guy de Lusignan, as also by the Earl of Warenne and Hugh Bigot the Justiciar The centre was under the command of Richard of Cornwall, King of the Romans, brother to King Henry; with him was his son Edmund, and three great Anglo-Scottish barons, Robert de Bruce, John Baliol, and John Comyn, who had come to join the Royalists with a large body of light-armed infantry from north of Tweed. In this division also were John Fitz-Alan and Henry de Percy. The left or southern wing was commanded by the King of England himself under his dragon-standard ¹¹ in his company was the Earl of Hereford, whose eldest son was serving in the very division of the baronial host which was about to bear down upon his father All accounts agree that the Royalists outnumbered the forces of Simon, especially in their array of fully-armed knights, though we cannot believe the exaggerated statement that the king had fifteen hundred men-at-arms on barded horses (destrarii coperti) and the barons only six hundred.

When the Royalists had got into order, the castle lay behind Prince Edward, the exit from the town of Lewes behind Richard of Cornwall, and the priory at the back of the king's own wing. Before they had advanced more than a few hundred yards from the town, the baronial army charged down upon them. There seems to have been little or no preliminary skirmishing, the battle commencing with a sharp shock all along the line, starting from the northern wings of each host, who met the first. This came from the fact that the Londoners on the baronial left had a shorter space to cover before contact took place: some of the chroniclers observe that they were so much in advance that the Royalists supposed that they were trying to outflank the castle and the division of Prince Edward. There is at any rate no doubt that the first clash of arms started on this wing. It was unfavourable to the baronial party: the knights who followed Segrave, Hastings, and Giffard were broken by the furious charge of the prince. Giffard was taken prisoner; Hastings turned his rein too soon for his own good repute.¹² Their horsemen were flung back on the Londoners, and threw them into woeful disorder even before Edward's knights dashed into the wavering mass. A moment later the whole left wing of Simon's host broke up and dispersed, the knights flying northward between the river and the Downs, the infantry north-westward up the steep slope, where they thought that the Royalist horsemen would find it hard to follow. Prince Edward had an old grievance to settle against the Londoners, for the insults which they had heaped on his mother in the preceding year. He urged the pursuit furiously, and forgot entirely the battle that was raging behind him in the centre and left of his father's army. The fugitives suffered fearfully from his fierce chase: sixty horsemen are said to have perished in striving to ford the Ouse; hundreds of the men of London were cut down as they fled along the slopes, and then towards Offham and the woods behind. The prince did not stay his hand till he was three miles from the battlefield, and quite out of sight of Lewes, which was hidden from him by the corner of the Downs. Then, at last rallying his men, he remounted the slope to return to his father; but on his way he caught sight of Earl Simon's chariot and its great banner, standing isolated at the head of the slope, under the protection of Le Blound and the baggage-guard. The Royalists jumped to the conclusion that Simon was still in his chariot, not knowing that his broken leg was long since healed, and that he was fighting hard on his horse in the valley below. They therefore wheeled aside and furiously attacked the baggage-guard. Le Blound and his men made a gallant resistance, but were at last overwhelmed and cut down. Then shouting, "Come out, Simon, thou devil," ¹³ the prince's knights broke open the chariot and hewed to pieces the unhappy hostages who were confined in it, before they could explain that they were the earl's foes and not his friends.¹⁴ Disappointed of their prey, Prince Edward and his men at last set forth to return to their main body.