Now, there is nothing that more disheartens untrained men than a check in their forward march. Countermarching to them appears but the forerunner of defeat, and the flow of ardour in any cause once hindered is difficult to recover. With regular troops the chances and changes incidental to campaigning inure them to disappointments, and the retreat of to-day they know often to be but the prelude of to-morrow’s advance. But with Monmouth’s men, their leader’s plan once altered, their fortunes seemed irretrievably clouded. Monmouth himself grew gloomy at the delay the vacillations of himself and his lieutenants had caused, and when on the afternoon of Sunday, July 5th, he ascended to this point to reconnoitre the position his opponents had taken up in the midst of the moor, his heart sank. He saw the glint of their arms, the colours of the regiments drawn up beneath the shadow of the tall tower of Westonzoyland, and he well knew that a conflict between them and his brave, but untaught, peasants could only prove fatal to his ambitions. He had, some years before, led those very soldiers to victory. “I know those men,” said he to his officers, leaning over these parapets of St. Mary’s; “they will fight!” By a circuitous route, his army left the town of Bridgwater when night was come and darkness had shrouded the moor. By narrow and rugged lanes they went, past Chedzoy, towards the Polden Hills. Here they turned, and, led by a guide, essayed to thread the maze of deep ditches called, in the parlance of the West Country, “Rhines.” It was not until two o’clock in the morning that they had reached within striking distance of the Royal troops, crossing safely the Black Ditch, and moving along the outer side of the Langmoor Rhine, in search of a passage, when a pistol was fired, either by accident or treachery. “A Dark night,” says one who was present, “and Thick Fogg covering the Moore.” The darkness and the sudden alarm caused by the pistol-shot threw Monmouth’s men into confusion, and the Royal forces were at the same time aroused. The night attack had failed. James II.’s troops challenged the masses of men they saw dimly advancing through the mist, and were for a time deceived by the answering cry of “Albemarle,” the name of the Royalist commander, who was supposed to be coming to the support of Lord Feversham. And thus the Monmouth men passed on to the Bussex Rhine, where they were simultaneously challenged and fired upon by another outpost. Dismayed by this volley at close quarters, the rebel horse, forming the advance, broke and dashed wildly back into the stolid ranks of the peasantry. It says much for the stubborn courage of those ploughmen and hedgers and ditchers who formed the bulk of the Duke’s ranks, that in this confusion they stood fast.