er, on the 7th of September, 1676, there appeared this fleet
of the King's Governor, set on retaking Virginia. Jamestown had notice.
The Bacon faction held the place with perhaps eight hundred men, Colonel
Hansford at their head. Summoned by Berkeley to surrender, Hansford
refused, but that same night, by advice of Lawrence and Drummond,
evacuated the place, drawing his force off toward the York. The next
day, emptied of all but a few citizens, Jamestown received the old
Governor and his army.

The tidings found Bacon on the upper York. Acting with his accustomed
energy, he sent out, far and wide, ringing appeals to the country to
rouse itself, for men to join him and march to the defeat of the old
tyrant. Numbers did come in. He moved with "marvelous celerity." When
he had, for the time and place, a large force of rebels, he marched, by
stream and plantation, tobacco field and forest, forge and mill, through
the early autumn country to Jamestown. Civil war was on.

Across the narrow neck of the Jamestown peninsula had been thrown a sort
of fortification with ditch, earthwork, and palisade. Before this
Bacon now sounded trumpets. No answer coming, but the mouths of cannon
appearing at intervals above the breastwork, the "rebel" general halted,
encamped his men, and proceeded to construct siege lines of his own. The
work must be done exposed to Sir William's iron shot.

Now comes a strange and discreditable incident. Patriots,
revolutionists, who on the whole would serve human progress, have yet,
as have we all, dark spots and seamy sides. Bacon's parties of workmen
were threatened, hindered, driven from their task by Berkeley's guns.
Bacon had a curious, unadmirable idea. He sent horsemen to neighboring
loyalist plantations to gather up and bring to camp, not the
planters--for they are with Berkeley in Jamestown--but the planters'
wives. Here are Mistress Bacon (wife of the elder Nathaniel Bacon),
Mistress Bray; Mistress Ballard, Mistress Page, and others. Protesting,
these ladies enter Bacon's camp, who sends one as envoy into the town
with the message that, if Berkeley attacks, the whole number of women
shall be placed as shield to Bacon's men who build earthworks.

He was as good--or as bad--as his word. At the first show of action
against his workmen these royalist women were placed in the front and
were kept there until Bacon had made his counter-line of defense.
Sir William Berkeley had great faults, but at tim