Gloucester, as leader of the Yorkist van, found himself opposed to the Lancastrians whom Somerset commanded in person; and, the ferocity of his nature being doubtless inflamed by the hereditary antipathy of the house of York to the house of Beaufort, he made a furious assault. The onslaught of the stripling war-chief, however, proved of no avail; for the nature of the ground was such as to prevent the Yorkists from coming hand to hand with their foes, while the Lancastrians, posted among bushes and trees, galled their assailants with showers of arrows. Gloucester was somewhat cowed, but his guile did not desert him. He assumed the air of a man who was baffled, pretended to be repulsed, and, retiring from the assault, contented himself with ordering the artillery, with which the Yorkists were better provided than their foes, to play upon the Lancastrian ranks. The aspect of the battle was now decidedly in favor of the Red Rose, and such as to cause the Yorkists some degree of anxiety. What the Lancastrians wanted was a war-chief of courage and experience, and Somerset neither had the talents nor the experience requisite for the occasion. At the head of that host on the banks of the Severn, such a man as the fifth Henry, or John, Duke of Bedford, might, by a decisive victory, have won back Margaret's crown. But the grandson of Katherine Swynford had not been intended by GOD and nature to cope with the royal warrior who laid Warwick low. Somerset had still to learn his incapacity for the part he had undertaken to enact. As yet he was under the influence of such a degree of vanity as prompted him to the rashest courses. Elate at Gloucester's retreat, and concluding that a determined effort would render the Lancastrians victorious, the shallow duke led his men through the openings that had been left in their intrenchments. Descending from the elevated ground, he charged Edward's centre host with violence, drove that part of the Yorkist army back, and then, with infinitely less prudence than presumption, followed the wily Gloucester into the open meadows. Once fairly away from his intrenchments, the Lancastrian leader found too late the error he had committed. Gloucester's stratagem had been attended with a success which even he could hardly have anticipated. Suddenly wheeling round and shouting their battle-cry, the boy-duke and the Yorkists turned upon their pursuers with the fury of lions; and, at the same time, the two hundred spearmen who had been sent to guard against an ambuscade in Tewkesbury Park came rushing to the conflict, and made a vigorous attack upon Somerset's flank. Taken by surprise, the Lancastrian van fled in disorder. Some made for the park; some ran toward the meadows; others flung themselves into the ditches; and so many were beaten down and slain where they fought, that the greensward was crimsoned with gore.