It is not difficult for the student of local histories, and of the existing records of these troublous days, to conjure up from even the scant details furnished by Hals the sad case of the terror-stricken inhabitants of the little port as their enemies poured down into the town by the path across the headland. Hals reproduces for us the scene of sudden and fierce attack, the hasty gathering together of what men there were in the town (for many must surely have been absent), the fight in the dimly or unlit streets, the ruthless striking down of women and children, and of the aged, the _sauve qui peut_, followed by a mad rush across the harbour to the Polruan side in search of safety on the further hills, and then the dawn, when the true amount of the devastation wrought could be seen by the survivors. Much--nay, the greater part--of the little town lay a heap of smoking ruins, whilst in the narrow streets, or what had been such, lay many corpses, some hacked beyond recognition and marking the stout resistance that the individual had made to the onslaught of the Breton and Norman marauders, whilst some lay charring amid the smouldering heaps of what once had been homes. It was with bursting, though, possibly, also thankful, hearts that the survivors of this terrible night saw their enemies depart with whatsoever booty they had saved from the flames and could easily bear. “The news,” Hals tells us, “of the French invasion in the morning flew far into the country, and the people of the contiguous parts as quickly put themselves in arms, and in great multitudes gathered together in order to raise the siege of Fowey, which the Frenchmen observing and fearing the consequence of their longer stay, having gotten sufficient treasure to defray the charge of their expedition, as hastily ran to their ships as they had deliberately entered the town, with small honour and less profit.” Soon the Fowey men were afloat again, and “in their fresh gale of fortune began to skim the seas with their often piracies,” making descents upon the Breton and Norman coast and exacting a terrible retribution for the ruthless doings of the Lord of Pomier and his men. If one may accept without question the historian, they were not easily satisfied, but many a Norman and Breton village and townlet on the opposite coasts was burned and sacked ere the “slate was wiped clean.”