They made shift to meet our attack as best they might, facing us with stubborn courage indeed, but with little skill of the military art, and with a battle front that seemed more like a moiling and howling mob of rioters than an army under its lawful captains. If any noise e’er heard could have effected it, we might have been checked indeed, for, as we galloped down upon them, they set up a chorus of shrieks and yells that seemed like to split one’s ears. Swords and maces seemed their principal weapons, with here and there a lance or a battle-ax, and mingled helter-skelter with their heavier arms, the bows and shafts of their archers. Their bows had not the length nor the power of those of our English foresters; and the cloud of arrows they sent toward our mail-clad line had no more effect than as if a flock of sparrows had sought to check and thwart us. Into that howling mob we rushed with leveled lances. Our horses were stayed by the very mass of the bodies of our enemies; and in a moment we were assailed, as it seemed, from all sides, by the survivors, some of them dreadfully wounded, but wielding swords and battle-clubs and javelins with a demon-like fury. Their skill with these weapons was not to be despised; and, if they had no coats of mail to shield them, neither were their movements impeded by weight of armor. Hundreds of our men-at-arms and scores of knights fell in that struggle on the river brink. Victory was no such easy goal as I had thought. Meanwhile the half of the Welsh army which was on the other side of the river, commanded by Rhys himself, essayed to re-cross and come to the aid of their comrades. They might well have succeeded, and mayhap found some means of outflanking us, had it not been for the watchfulness of Cedric of Mountjoy. He and our whole array of archers had been close behind us, striving to do their share by way of shooting between our bodies at the mass of Welshmen. But soon the tangle was such that their bolts seemed as like to slay friend as foe, and they had gradually desisted. Then Cedric caught sight of the Welsh entering the water on the farther side, and drawing the Mountjoy archers to the left of the main battle, began sending a stream of quarrels in their direction. The Lord Constable, having just then a moment’s respite, saw what was toward, and sent word to the other leaders of our bowmen to follow the tactics of the Mountjoy men. In a moment the air above the stream was filled with a cloud of bolts and shafts, and the waters became clogged with dead and dying men and horses. Such a rain of death and wounds was not to be endured by unprotected men. Soon the Welsh warriors were turning their horses’ heads again toward the bank; and those that regained it, with their fellows who had not yet reëntered the ford, fell back to a safer distance.