Bertrand of Brittany by Warwick Deeping

CROQUART the Fleming had marched from Pontivy to take Josselin by surprise at the breaking of a summer dawn. The little town, with its gate-houses and spires, its high roofs and timber-capped turrets, had stood black and silent against the gold of the east when Croquart's stormers crept up to set their ladders against the walls. Unluckily for the Fleming and his men, the Sieur de Beaumanoir had been forewarned as to their coming, and their welcome that May morning came in the shape of stones, molten lead, pitch, and a rain of quarrels from the walls. They had been beaten back, to flounder, many of them, like great black cockroaches in the mud of the town ditch. And, to complete the thoroughness of the repulse, the gates of Josselin had opened wide to pour columns of armed men into the town meadows.

The cocks of Josselin were still crowing when Geoffroi Dubois and his Breton gentlemen and men-at-arms rode through and through the disordered companies of the Fleming's "horse. " Many debts were waiting for dismissal on the green slopes under the walls of Josselin town. Every man who could carry a sword or bill swarmed out by the gates to strike a blow against these plunderers of Breton towns. Butchers with their cleavers, smiths with their hammers, armorers' apprentices with arms fresh from the forge followed in the track of the Sieur de Beaumanoir's columns of steel. There was no taking of prisoners that morning in the Josselin meadows. The townsmen rushed in among the disordered free-lances, stabbing the horses and bringing the men-at-arms to earth. John Hamlin, an Englishman, and the Fleming's brother in arms, was battered to death by the hammers of two smiths as he lay helpless in his heavy harness. Before the sun had topped the steeples the broken companies were streaming for the open moors, with Geoffroi Dubois and his Bretons in pursuit.