Now the sun rises and the battle begins in earnest. It resolves itself into two rows of men firing at each other across a broad ditch of inky water. The Somersetshire rustics fight like veterans, but all in vain. The unequal contest is soon decided, and Monmouth, seeing that all hope has gone, turns and runs away. His deserted followers, however, make a gallant stand, but their scythes and pitchforks are useless against the swords of the king’s troopers. The arrival of the artillery brings the engagement to a speedy close. The rebel battalions waver, break, and flee, the Mendip miners alone remaining to stain the marshy ground with their blood. More than one thousand of the rebels lie dead on the field. The last battle has been fought on English ground. But what of Monmouth? He did not draw rein until he reached Chedzoy, where he stopped a moment to mount a fresh horse and hide his blue ribbon and his George. He rode on all day towards the south-east, hoping to gain the New Forest, where he might lurk in the cabins of deer-stealers until an opportunity arrived to escape to the Continent. The night was passed in the open air; in the morning he and his companions found themselves ringed in by their foes. Monmouth changed clothes with a peasant and betook himself into a field, partly of rye, pease, and oats, partly overgrown with furze and brambles. A woman reported that she had seen two strangers enter the field, and soldiers, stimulated by the offer of £5,000 for the capture of the duke, were told off to watch the fences while dogs were turned out among the bushes. At nightfall no capture had been made. The fugitives lay close behind a thick hedge; thirty times they ventured to look out, and thirty times they saw an armed sentinel watching for them. At sunrise the search began again, and not a yard of the field went unexamined. At length a gaunt figure in a shepherd’s dress was discovered in a dry ditch. In his pockets were some raw pease, a watch, a purse of gold, and the George which he had received from the hands of his father in the days when he was the spoiled darling of the court. The wretched man was conveyed to London in a state of abject terror. He begged for an interview with his uncle, and what happened at that interview you already know. The scene with which this chapter opened was the sequel to his capture, the painful episode which preceded his execution.