Perche’s comrades at once rushed down the hill[208] and rejoined the bulk of the French troops, to whom his heroism and the concentration of the English around his person had given a breathing-space of which they had made good use. They and their English allies had rallied in the lower town, and now came, in close array, up the hill, hoping to regain possession of its summit. Meanwhile the young Marshal had rejoined his father. “Are you hurt?” asked the Earl. “No, Sir.” “Forward then! This day we will conquer, or chase them from the field.” Attacked on their right flank by Chester and his “good folk” before they reached the hill-top, confronted when they did reach it by the Marshals, and shut in between the minster and the castle, the French, after another stubborn fight, were again driven down the slope; and this time they were chased right out of the city and through its southern gate, or Stone-Bow,[209] to Wigford Bridge.[210] There they made a last gallant stand, fighting with such desperate fury that “if God had spoken by thunder, He would not have been heard.” Their pursuers were no less daring and impetuous: William Bloet, the young Marshal’s standard-bearer, charged into the crowd on the bridge with such vehemence that he and his horse went sheer over into the river, only, however, to struggle out again with equal quickness and gallantry. Gradually the cry of “King’s men! King’s men!”[211] rose higher above the din. Saer de Quincy and his son Robert were taken; so was Robert FitzWalter; so were several other rebel barons;[212] at last the rest turned and fled across the suburb of Wigford by “the street which goes straight to the hospital”[213]--in other words, the whole length of the present High Street--till they reached the outer or furthermost gate of Lincoln.[214] This gate, known as the Great or Western Bar-Gate, protected the bridge by which the main road from Lincoln to the south crossed the great drain called the Sincil Dyke. Here the fugitives were checked by a double obstacle. The bar of the gate was so constructed that the gate closed of itself after every individual who passed in or out. Just as the foremost of them reached it, a cow tried to enter, and, the gate falling upon her, stuck fast, so that egress was altogether impossible till the animal was slain; and even then, as there was apparently no means of fixing the gate open, each man as he came up had to dismount and open it for himself.[215] The unhappy fugitives might, it seems, have been captured or even slain almost to a man, had their pursuers so willed it; but many of them were English, and the ties of blood restrained their kinsmen in the royalist host from carrying the pursuit to extremity.[216] Notwithstanding this forbearance, however, a large number of prisoners were captured.[217] Among these were nearly all the English barons who had sided with Louis;[218] no less than seven were taken by John Marshal, and