to hold their own in the open ground about the cathedral.  The Count of Perche was slain by a sword-thrust through the eyehole of his helmet.  The royalists chased the barons down the steep lanes which connect the upper with the lower town.  When they reached level ground the baronial troops rallied, and once more strove to reascend the hill.  But the town was assailed on every side, and its land defences yielded with little difficulty.  The Earl of Chester poured his vassals through one of the eastern gates, and took the barons in flank.  Once more they broke, and this time they rallied not again, but fled through the Wigford suburb seeking any means of escape.  Some obstruction in the Bar-gate, the southern exit from the city, retarded their flight, and many of the leaders were captured.  The remnant fled to London, thinking that “every bush was full of marshals,” and suffering severely from the hostility of the peasantry.  Only three persons were slain in the battle, but there was a cruel massacre of the defenceless citizens after its close.  So vast was the booty won by the victors that in scorn they called the fight the Fair of Lincoln![1]

    [1] For a discussion of the battle, see English Hist.  Review,
    xviii. (1903), 240-65.

Louis’ prospects were still not desperate.  The victorious army scattered, each man to his own house, so that the marshal was in no position to press matters to extremities.  But there was a great rush to make terms with the victor, and Louis thought it prudent to abandon the hopeless siege of Dover, and take refuge with his partisans, the Londoners.  Meanwhile the marshal hovered round London, hoping eventually to shut up the enemy in the capital.  On June 12, the Archbishop of Tyre and three Cistercian abbots, who had come to England to preach the Crusade, persuaded both parties to accept provisional articles of peace.  Louis stipulated for a complete amnesty to all his partisans; but the legate declined to grant pardon to the rebellious clerks who had refused to obey the interdict, conspicuous among whom was the firebrand Simon Langton, brother of the archbishop.  Finding no compromise possible, Louis broke off the negotiations rather than abandon his friends.  Gualo urged a siege of London, but the marshal saw that his resources were not adequate for such a step.  Again many of his followers went home, and the court abode first at Oxford and afterwards at Gloucester.  It seemed as if the war might go on for ever.

Blanche of Castile, Louis’ wife, redoubled her efforts on his behalf.  In response to her entreaties a hundred knights and several hundred men-at-arms took ship for England.  Among the knights was the famous William des Barres, one of the heroes of Bouvines, and Theobald, Count of Blois.  Eustace the Monk, a renegade clerk turned pirate, and a hero of later romance, took command of the fleet.  On the eve of St. Bartholomew, August 23, Eustace sailed from Calais towards the mouth of the Thames.  Kent