Warwick at once entered the city, and began the business of pacification by promptly hanging sixty men in the Market Place, by Norwich Castle, “without hearing the cause”; and by issuing a proclamation that all who were out of doors would receive similar treatment. Then came a mishap, for the greater part of Warwick’s artillery fell into Ket’s hands. The drivers of the gun-carriages, entering the city after the soldiers, by St. Bennet’s Gate on the west, and ignorant of the way, actually passed out at Bishop’s Gate on the east on the very road towards Mousehold, and were quickly taken. Ket had now the advantage in ordnance, and there was fighting in the city all Sunday, August 25th. So uncertain was the issue that the burgesses feared Warwick would suffer Northampton’s fate, and prayed him to depart without further loss. But Warwick, waiting for reinforcements, and knowing that 1,400 German mercenaries were close at hand, was not the man to beat an ignominious retreat. The hireling “lanznechts” arrived next day, and on Tuesday, August 27th, came the fatal battle. Instead of remaining at Mousehold, where a strong resistance might have been made, the rebels decided to march out boldly from their camp and meet the king’s army in the open country that lay between Mousehold Heath and the city. An old song was recalled, which, it seemed, foretold victory in such a case: The country gnoffes (churls), Hob, Dick, and Rick, With clubs and clouted shoon, Shall fill the vale Of Dussindale With slaughtered bodies soon. But the country churls were to be the slaughtered, and not the slaughterers. Warwick marched out by the north-east gate of St. Martin-at-the-Oak, and for the last time a herald promised pardon to all who would surrender. But the hangings in the market place had destroyed all confidence in such proclamations, and the answer to the herald was that they “perceived this pardon to be nothing else but a cask full of ropes and halters.” Ket’s judgment failed him utterly on that last day of the rising. On the strength of an irrelevant old song he allowed his army to go to its doom unchecked, and at the very time when good generalship was wanted above all other things, Robert Ket seems to have lost his nerve, and to have been struck by some paralysis of the will, as though conscious of impending ruin. The peasants poured down into the valley, and into the meadows beyond Magdalen and Pockthorp Gates, and fought with desperate courage, but they were simply cut to pieces by the professional soldiery. At four o’clock in the afternoon it was all over, the defeat utter and complete, and Robert Ket and his brother were in flight. The remains of the rebel army laid down their arms, when Warwick himself offered pardon in the king’s name to those who would surrender.