Colonel Hansford, with Drummond and Lawrence, rode north to find General Bacon. They found him at West Point and told him the startling news that Sir William had come back with an army. The fight was to be waged all over again, the question whether Bacon or Berkeley was to rule Virginia was yet to be settled. Bacon had only a body-guard with him, but he mounted in haste and rode toward Jamestown, sending couriers in all directions to rouse the countryside and bring his men to his flag. The message came to Curles, and Edmund Porter and his father and their neighbors armed and hurried to join their general. So swiftly did the planters take to horse that by the time Bacon was in sight of Jamestown he was followed by several hundred men. Sir William had built an earthwork and palisade across the neck of the island where Jamestown stands. Bacon ordered his trumpets to sound, and then a volley to be fired into the town. No guns answered his, and Bacon ordered his troops to throw up breastworks in front of the palisade, while he made his headquarters at "Greenspring," a house that belonged to Sir William. Now Bacon, although usually a gentleman, resorted to a trick that was a blot on his character. He sent horsemen through the near-by country to bring the wives of some of the men who were fighting on Berkeley's side into his camp. He sent one of these women, under a flag of truce, into the town to tell her husband and the others there that Bacon meant to place these wives in front of his own men while they were building the earthworks, so that any shots fired would hit the women first. This he did. He made these women stand as a shield before his men. The governor's party would not fire a shot. The earthworks were finished, and then Bacon had the women escorted to a place of safety. The trick savored more of the customs of some of the Indian tribes the settlers had been fighting than of the warfare of Virginia gentlemen. When the women were gone, Sir William burst out of Jamestown with eight hundred men and attacked Bacon's troopers. But the rabble that made up the governor's army, longshoremen, fishermen from Accomac, a rabble attracted by the hope of plunder, was no match for the well-drilled and well-armed planters. At the first touch of steel they turned and fled back to the town, leaving a dozen wounded on the ground. Sir William lashed them with a tongue of scorn, but his anger did no good. He saw that he could not rely on this new following, and so embarked on his ships again that night, and sailed away from Jamestown. Bacon marched in, took counsel with his officers, and determined that Sir William should make no further use of his capital. Orders were given to set fire to all the houses, and shortly the town, founded by that great adventurer, John Smith, was only a mass of burned and blackened timbers.