And now the Count de Perche had reason to discover and to repent the error of which he had been guilty when he rejected the advice of Robert Fitzwalter, and refused to march out of Lincoln and give his enemies battle in the open country. Engaged in a desperate struggle in narrow streets where cavalry could not charge, the French from the beginning had so decidedly the worst of the encounter that they fought almost without hope of victory. Horses and riders alike suffered in the conflict, and while the chargers were “mown down like pigs” by the crossbowmen, the French knights, dismounted and at the mercy of their assailants, surrendered almost in a mass. Nor did the Anglo-Norman barons display any of that high spirit with which, in later civil wars, such nobles as Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, faced the danger that they had provoked and defied. On the contrary, they gave up their swords almost to a man, and resigned themselves sheepishly to their fate. Robert Fitzwalter yielded himself prisoner, so did the Earl of Winchester, so did the Earl of Hereford, and William de Roos, and William Beauchamp, and William Moubray, and Gilbert de Gant, who must have felt crestfallen indeed as he thought of the earldom which had been given to him by a man not entitled to grant it, and for a victory that was never to be won. All these magnates, who had talked so boastfully a year earlier, when they brought Prince Louis into England and did homage to him at Westminster, now stood with mortification in their faces, and perhaps remorse at their hearts, baffled, conquered, and captive, after having failed in their criminal endeavour to reduce the country, for whose laws and liberties they had professed such respect, under the rule of a French prince, who, they well knew, could only rule as a conqueror.
But the love of life, or the fear of death, which prompted Fitzwalter, and De Quency, and Bohun to surrender rather than fall bravely was not so contagious as to reach the heart of the Count de Perche. Never even for a moment did he show the white feather, or any abatement of the defiant courage that had characterised his career in England. Not, indeed, that there remained even a chance of redeeming the fortunes of the day. Roland and Oliver, and all the Paladins of Charlemagne, could they have come out of their graves, would have struggled in vain to rally the broken ranks of the army that had, a few hours earlier, been so confident, and which was now flying in terror through the south gate. On all sides the count was deserted. His Anglo-Norman allies were yielding before his eyes, his French comrades were endeavouring to save themselves by flight, forgetting in their haste that in order to do so they must pass through the country whose inhabitants they had recently exasperated by their outrages, and who were panting for an opportunity of avenging the wrongs that had been done to them and to theirs.