forsooth, the homestead to Lord Warwick's private house! Ye gentlemen
and knights of England, let them and their rabble prosper, and your
properties will be despoiled, your lives insecure, all law struck
dead. What differs Richard of Warwick from Jack Cade, save that if
his name is nobler, so is his treason greater? Commoners and soldiers
of England, freemen, however humble, what do these rebel lords (who
would rule in the name of Lancaster) desire? To reduce you to
villeins and to bondsmen, as your forefathers were to them. Ye owe
freedom from the barons to the just laws of my sires, your kings.
Gentlemen and knights, commoners and soldiers, Edward IV. upon his
throne will not profit by a victory more than you. This is no war of
dainty chivalry,--it is a war of true men against false. No quarter!
Spare not either knight or hilding. Warwick, forsooth, will not smite
the Commons. Truly not,--the rabble are his friends! I say to you--"
and Edward, pausing in the excitement and sanguinary fury of his tiger
nature,--the soldiers, heated like himself to the thirst of blood, saw
his eyes sparkle, and his teeth gnash, as he added in a deeper and
lower, but not less audible voice, "I say to you, SLAY ALL! [Hall.]
What heel spares the viper's brood?"

"We will! we will!" was the horrid answer, which came hissing and
muttered forth from morion and cap of steel.

"Hark! to their bombards!" resumed Edward. "The enemy would fight
from afar, for they excel us in their archers and gunners. Upon them,
then, hand to hand, and man to man! Advance banners, sound trumpets!
Sir Oliver, my bassinet! Soldiers, if my standard falls, look for the
plume upon your king's helmet! Charge!"

Then, with a shout wilder and louder than before, on through the hail