Raising the war-cry of York, and sounding trumpets, they charged through the drifting snow-flakes, and awoke the fury of the battle. The Duke was outnumbered and surrounded, but fought stubbornly, being nobly seconded by his heroic army. Lord Clifford hotly attacked him, exerting every effort to cut off his retreat. Duke Richard valiantly attempted to cut his way through and retire into Sandal, but Clifford as sternly drew around him the iron bonds of war, prevented all retreat, and held him to the trial. The battle was extremely sanguinary, and the Lancastrians fought as though they were the red-handed arbiters of the whole dispute, and, like avenging angels, must wash out the treason of York in streams of blood. As Mountford fought at Evesham so fought the Lord Protector that day--exacting the heaviest price for his doomed life. Weapons whirled before his face, rang on his mail, and probed the jointed armour with point and edge until the good steel harness was dinted and stained with gore. Many warriors perished around him, and he, too, fell, sorely stricken, and died in his blood, amid the trampling of iron-clad feet, and the clash of crossing swords, as friends and foes fought hand-to-hand above his body. The crisis came. The falcon-banner fell, and the pursuing swords maimed and slew the fugitives, burdening the old year with the sorrows of the widow and the orphan. In the triumphant van, in the moment of victory, Richard Hanson, Mayor of Hull, laid down his life for Queen Margaret and her fair son. Salisbury won his way through the press, to fall by headsman's axe. Rutland broke away from the slaughter, reached Wakefield Bridge, to perish by the steel of Clifford, happy in his early death that saved him from the infamy of bloody years that tarnished the fame of his brothers, March, Clarence, and Gloucester. Some chroniclers represent the Queen as commanding her army in person, and as luring the Duke to meet her in open field. Dissuaded from the encounter by his friends, he declared that: "All men would cry wonder, and report dishonour, that a woman had made a dastard of me, whom no man could even to this day report as a coward! And surely my mind is rather to die with honour than to live with shame! Advance my banners in the name of God and of St. George." This is not the York of history.