a pursuit so eager as to throw them
into confusion; and then, when the column, thus disarranged, should
reach the place of ambuscade, the Normans were to come down upon them
suddenly from their hiding-places, and complete their discomfiture.

The plan was well laid, and wisely and bravely executed; and it was most
triumphantly successful in its result. The vanguard of Henry's army were
deceived by the pretended flight of the Norman detachment. They
supposed, too, that it constituted the whole body of their enemies. They
pressed forward, therefore, with great exultation and eagerness to
pursue them. News of the attack, and of the apparent repulse with which
the French soldiers had met it, passed rapidly along the valley,
producing every where the wildest excitement, and an eager desire to
press forward to the scene of conflict. The whole valley was filled with
shouts and outcries; baggage was abandoned, that those who had charge of
it might hurry on; men ran to and fro for tidings, or ascended eminences
to try to see. Horsemen drove at full speed from front to rear, and from
rear on to the front again; orders and counter orders were given, which
nobody would understand or attend to in the general confusion and din.
In fact, the universal attention seemed absorbed in one general and
eager desire to press forward with headlong impetuosity to the scene of
victory and pursuit which they supposed was enacting in the van.

The army pressed on in this confused and excited manner until they
reached the place of ambuscade. They went on, too, through this narrow
passage, as heedlessly as ever; and, when the densest and most powerful
portion of the column was crowding through, they were suddenly
thunderstruck by the issuing of a thousand weapons from the heights and
thickets above them on either hand--a dreadful shower of arrows,
javelins, and spears, which struck down hundreds in a moment, and
overwhelmed the rest with astonishment and terror. As soon as this first
discharge had been effected, the concealed enemy came pouring down the
sides of the mountain, springing out from a thousand hiding-places, as
if suddenly brought into being by some magic power. The discomfiture of
Henry's forces was complete and irremediable. The men fled every where
in utter dismay, trampling upon and destroying one another, as they
crowded back in terrified throngs to find some place of safety up the
valley. There, after a day or two, Henry got toget