The Lancastrians then gave way, and retreated, at first in orderly fashion, but finally falling into a panic, when they were cut down by thousands. They lost twenty-eight thousand men, and the Yorkists eight thousand. This was a fine piece of work for the beginning of Passion-Week, bloody laurels gained in civil conflict being substituted for palm-branches! No such battle was ever fought by Englishmen in foreign lands. This was the day when "Wharfe ran red with slaughter, Gathering in its guilty flood The carnage, and the ill-spilt blood That forty thousand lives could yield. Crécy was to this but sport, Poitiers but a pageant vain, And the work of Agincourt Only like a tournament. Half the blood which there was spent Had sufficed to win again Anjou and ill-yielded Maine, Normandy and Aquitaine." Edward IV., it should seem, was especially favored by the powers of the air; for, if he owed victory at Towton to wind and snow, he owed it to a mist at Barnet. This last action was fought on the 14th of April, 1471, and the prevalence of the mist, which was very thick, enabled Edward so to order his military work as to counterbalance the enemy's superiority in numbers. The mist was attributed to the arts of Friar Bungay, a famous and most rascally "nigromancer." The mistake made by Warwick's men, when they thought Oxford's cognizance, a star paled with rays, was that of Edward, which was a sun in full glory, (the White Rose _en soleil,_) and so assailed their own friends, and created a panic, was in part attributable to the mist, which prevented them from seeing clearly; and this mistake was the immediate occasion of the overthrow of the army of the Red Rose. That Edward was enabled to fight the Battle of Barnet with any hope of success was also owing to the weather. Margaret of Anjou had assembled a force in France, Louis XI. supporting her cause, and this force was ready to sail in February, and by its presence in England victory would unquestionably have been secured for the Lancastrians. But the elements opposed themselves to her purpose with so much pertinacity and consistency that it is not strange that men should have seen therein the visible hand of Providence. Three times did she embark, but only to be driven back by the wind, and to suffer loss. Some of her party sought to persuade her to abandon the enterprise, as Heaven seemed to oppose it; but Margaret was a strong-minded woman, and would not listen to the suggestions of superstitious cowards. She sailed a fourth time, and held on in the face of bad weather. Half a day of good weather was all that was necessary to reach England, but it was not until the end of almost the third week that she was able to effect a landing, and then at a point distant from Warwick. Had the King-maker been the statesman-soldier that he has had the credit of being, he never would have fought Edward until he had been joined by Margaret; and he