CHAPTER III. A PAUSE.
In the profound darkness of the night and the thick fog, Edward hadstationed his men at a venture upon the heath at Gladsmoor, [Edward "hadthe greater number of men."--HALL, p. 296.] and hastily environedthe camp with palisades and trenches. He had intended to have restedimmediately in front of the foe, but, in the darkness, mistook theextent of the hostile line; and his men were ranged only opposite tothe left side of the earl's force (towards Hadley), leaving the rightunopposed. Most fortunate for Edward was this mistake; for Warwick'sartillery, and the new and deadly bombards he had constructed, wereplaced on the right of the earl's army; and the provident earl,naturally supposing Edward's left was there opposed to him, orderedhis gunners to cannonade all night. Edward, "as the flashes of theguns illumined by fits the gloom of midnight, saw the advantage ofhis unintentional error; and to prevent Warwick from discovering it,reiterated his orders for the most profound silence." [Sharon Turner.]Thus even his very blunders favoured Edward more than the wisestprecautions had served his fated foe.
Raw, cold, and dismal dawned the morning of the fourteenth of April, theEaster Sabbath. In the fortunes of that day were involved those of allthe persons who hitherto, in the course of this narrative, may haveseemed to move in separate orbits from the fiery star of Warwick. Now,in this crowning hour, the vast and gigantic destiny of the great earlcomprehended all upon which its darkness or its light had fallen: notonly the luxurious Edward, the perjured Clarence, the haughty Margaret,her gallant son, the gentle Anne, the remorseful Isabel, the dark guileof Gloucester, the rising fortunes of the gifted Hastings,--but on thehazard of that die rested the hopes of Hilyard, and the interests of thetrader Alwyn, and the permanence of that frank, chivalric, hardy, stillhalf Norman race, of which Nicholas Alwyn and his Saxon class were therival antagonistic principle, and Marmaduke Nevile the ordinary type.Dragged inexorably into the whirlpool of that mighty fate were eventhe very lives of the simple Scholar, of his obscure and devoted child.Here, into this gory ocean, all scattered rivulets and streams hadhastened to merge at last.
But grander and more awful than all individual interests were thoseassigned to the fortunes of this battle, so memorable in the Englishannals,--the ruin or triumph of a dynasty; the fall of that warlikebaronage, of which Richard Nevile was the personation, the crowningflower, the greatest representative and the last,--associated withmemories of turbulence and excess, it is true, but with the proudest andgrandest achievements in our early history; with all such liberty as hadbeen yet achieved since the Norman Conquest; with all such glory as hadmade the island famous,--here with Runnymede, and there with Cressy; therise of a crafty, plotting, imperious Despotism, based upon the growingsympathy of craftsmen and traders, and ripening on the one hand to theTudor tyranny, the Republican reaction under the Stuarts, the slavery,and the civil war, but on the other hand to the concentration of allthe vigour and life of genius into a single and strong government, thegraces, the arts, the letters of a polished court, the freedom, theenergy, the resources of a commercial population destined to rise abovethe tyranny at which it had first connived, and give to the emancipatedSaxon the markets of the world. Upon the victory of that day all thesecontending interests, this vast alternative in the future, swayed andtrembled. Out, then, upon that vulgar craving of those who comprehendneither the vast truths of life nor the grandeur of ideal art, andwho ask from poet or narrator the poor and petty morality of "PoeticalJustice,"--a justice existing not in our work-day world; a justiceexisting not in the sombre page of history; a justice existing notin the loftier conceptions of men whose genius has grappled with theenigmas which art and poetry only can foreshadow and divine,--unknownto us in the street and the market, unknown to us on the scaffold of thepatriot or amidst the flames of the martyr, unknown to us in the Learand the Hamlet, in the Agamemnon and the Prometheus. Millions uponmillions, ages upon ages, are entered but as items in the vast accountin which the recording angel sums up the unerring justice of God to man.
Raw, cold, and dismal dawned the morning of the fourteenth of April. Andon that very day Margaret and her son, and the wife and daughter of LordWarwick, landed, at last, on the shores of England. [Margaret landed atWeymouth; Lady Warwick, at Portsmouth.] Come they for joy or for woe,for victory or despair? The issue of this day's fight on the heath ofGladsmoor will decide. Prank thy halls, O Westminster, for the triumphof the Lancastrian king,--or open thou, O Grave, to receive thesaint-like Henry and his noble son. The king-maker goes before ye,saint-like father and noble son, to prepare your thrones amongst theliving or your mansions amongst the dead!
The Last of the Barons — Complete Page 92
