This paper, being drawn, was the more quickly signed because there arrived, in the midst of the debate, a fresh Indian alarm. Attack threatened a fort upon the York-whence the Governor had seen fit to remove arms and ammunition! The news came most opportunely for Bacon. "There were no more discourses." The major portion of the large assemblage signed.
The old Government in Virginia was thus denied. But it was held that government there must be, and that the people of Virginia through representatives must arrange for it. Writs of election, made as usual in the King's name, and signed by Bacon and by those members of the Council who were of the revolt, went forth to all counties. The Assembly thus provided was to meet at Jamestown in September.
So much business done, off rode Bacon and his men to put down this latest rising of the Indians. Not only these but red men in a new quarter, tribes south of the James, kept them employed for weeks to come. Nor were they unmindful of that proud old man, Sir William Berkeley, over on the Eastern Shore, a well-peopled region where traveling by boat and by sandy road was sufficiently easy. Bacon, Lawrence, and Drummond finally decided to take Sir William captive and to bring him back to Jamestown. For this purpose they dispatched a ship across the Bay, with two hundred and fifty men, under the command of Giles Bland, "a man of courage and haughty bearing," and "no great admirer of Sir William's goodness." The ship proceeded to the Accomac shore, anchored in some bight, and sent ashore men to treat with the Governor. But the Governor turned the tables on them. He made himself captor, instead of being made captive. Bland and his lieutenants were taken, whereupon their following surrendered into Berkeley's hands. Bland's second in command was hanged; Bland himself was held in irons.
Now Berkeley's star was climbing. In Accomac he gathered so many that, with those who had fled with him and later recruits who crossed the Bay, he had perhaps a thousand men. He stowed these upon the ship of the ill-fated Bland and upon a number of sloops. With seventeen sail in all, the old Governor set his face west and south towards the mouth of the James.
In that river, 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, tobaccofield and forest, forge and mill, through the early autumn country to Jamestown. Civil war was on.
Across the narrow neck of the Jamestown penin sula 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 times--not always--he displayed chivalry.
For that day "the ladies' white aprons" guarded General Bacon and all his works. The next day, the defenses completed, this "white garde" was withdrawn.
Berkeley waited no longer but, though now at a disadvantage, opened fire and charged with his men through gate and over earthworks. The battle that followed was short and decisive. Berkeley's chance-gathered army was no match for Bacon's seasoned Indian fighters and for desperate men who knew that they must win or be hanged for traitors. The Governor's force wavered and, unable to stand its ground, turned and fled, leaving behind some dead and wounded. Then Bacon, who also had cannon, opened upon the town and the ships that rode before it. In the night the King's Governor embarked for the second time and with him, in that armada from the Eastern Shore, the greater part of the force he had gathered. When dawn came, Bacon saw that the ships, large and small, were gone, sailing back to Accomac. Bacon and his following thus came peaceably into Jamestown, but with the somewhat fell determination to burn the place. It should "harbor no more rogues."
