It was at the end of a September day when Bacon and his small army of "rebels" arrived. Springing from his horse, he led the tired men up to the palisades and surveyed the governor's works of defence. Then he ordered his trumpeter to sound defiance and his men to fire on the garrison. There was no return fire. Sir William knew that the assailants were short of provisions, and trusted to hunger to make them retire. But Bacon was versed in the art of foraging. At Green Spring, three miles away, was Governor Berkeley's fine mansion, and from this the invading army quickly supplied itself. The governor afterwards bitterly complained that his mansion "was almost ruined; his household goods, and others of great value, totally plundered; that he had not a bed to lie on; two great beasts, three hundred sheep, seventy horses and mares, all his corn and provisions, taken away." Evidently the "rebels" knew something about the art of war. This was not all, for their leader adopted another stratagem not well in accordance with the rules of chivalry. A number of the loyalists of the vicinity had joined Berkeley, and Bacon sent out small parties of horse, which captured the wives of these men and brought them into camp. Among them were the lady of Colonel Bacon, Madame Bray, Madame Page, and Madame Ballard. He sent one of these ladies to the town, with a warning to the husbands not to attack him in his camp, or they would find their wives in front of his line. What Bacon actually wanted these ladies for was to make use of them in building his works. He raised by moonlight a defensive work of trees, brushwood and earth around the governor's outwork of palisades, placing the ladies in front of the workmen to keep the garrison from firing on them. But he had the chivalry to take them out of harm's way when the governor's men made a sortie on his camp. The fight that took place may have been a hard one or a light one. We have no very full account of it. The most we know is that Bacon and his men won the victory, and that the governor's men were driven back, leaving their drum and their dead behind them. Whether hard or light, his repulse was enough for Sir William's valor. Well intrenched as he was and superior in numbers, his courage suddenly gave out, and he fled in haste to his ships, which set sail in equal haste down the river, their speed accelerated by the cannon-balls which the "rebels" sent after them.