The first recorded incident was one of good omen for the Royalists. Some of them found the enemy’s chief engineer[198] working a stone-caster which hurled stones against one of the towers of the castle. Mistaking the new-comers for knights of his own party, he, all the more eagerly, placed a stone in his machine, but as he was giving the signal for its discharge they came up behind him and struck off his head.[199] The Marshal and the Earl of Salisbury “turned to the right, leaving a minster on their left,”[200] and came upon a cluster of enemies, one of whom, Robert of Ropsley, levelled his spear “to joust,” and struck that of Longsword with such force that it shivered into fragments; but the Marshal gave him such a blow between the shoulders that he fell to the ground “and crawled away to hide himself.” The fight swept onward almost to the brow of the hill on which the city was set, till on a level space near the great minster,[201] the French made a resolute stand under the direction of the Count of Perche.[202] He was only a youth, of scarce two and twenty years,[203] “handsome, tall, and noble-looking.”[204] He stood at bay as bravely as King Stephen had stood in somewhat like circumstances in the earlier battle of Lincoln; and for a while he and his men succeeded in checking the progress of the Royalists. By degrees, however, the French lost ground and began to fall back down the hill. Perche, with a few of his personal followers, alone kept his post, and was at last surrounded by almost the whole force of the English. They called upon him to surrender, but he refused with an oath, saying he would never yield to one of a race “who had been traitors to their king.”[205] Reginald Croc, a knight of Falkes’s household,[206] then levelled a spear at him and struck him in the eye. The Marshal, coming up at that moment, seized the bridle of the count’s horse, “and it seemed right, as the count was the chief man on the French side.” Perche dropped the bridle, took his sword in both hands, and struck with it on the Marshal’s helmet three blows in quick succession, “so mighty that they dinted it visibly,” and then suddenly fell from his horse. The Marshal thought he had fainted, “and feared that he himself should be blamed therefor.” “Dismount and take off his helmet,” said one of Perche’s men, William of Montigny, “for it hurts him; but I doubt he will stand up no more.” Croc’s spear had in fact pierced through the eye to the brain, and when the helmet was removed the friends and foes who crowded round saw that the gallant youth was dead.[207]