Page:The Queens of England.djvu/235

MARGARET OF ANJOU. 199 that the tongue is sometimes a sharper weapon than the sword, and that a woman's taunts pierce through armor which might defy the thrusts of the steel. Secure in her superior numbers, Margaret resolved to force her adversary from his entrench- ments, and, marching her troops under the castle walls, assailed the duke in terms of such bitter contumely, and with such sarcastic reflection upon his cowardice in fearing to face a woman, that, exasperated beyond all 'prudence, he sallied from the gates and soon found himself overwhelmed by the vast disproportion of an enemy, whose advantage was augmented by an ambush previously prepared by the queen. The struggle was neither dubious nor protracted ; in less than half an hour two thousand Yorkists, with their leader, lay dead on Wake- field Green ; and so fiercely were the passions of the combat- ants inflamed, that even after the engagement, when Aspill, the late duke's chaplain, endeavored to save the life of the young Earl of Rutland, his pupil, by declaring his parentage to Lord Clifford, that latter "stuck his dagger into the boy's heart, and went on his way rejoicing at the most barbarous and inhuman revenge that ever cruel man took." It was this relentless soldier, whose strong political partisanship was aggravated by the recollection of his father's death at St. Alban's, who brought the head of York to the queen placed on the point of a spear and crowned with a paper diadem, say- ing, "Madame your woe is done; here is your king's ransom." Margaret is said to have at first been shocked at the bloody sight. She averted from it her eyes, pale and trembling ; but, anon, at the memory of the insults and wrongs which he had heaped upon her and hers, how he had sought to dishonor her name, and to annihilate her race — she laughed loud and hysteri- cally, and commended the head to be placed over the gates of York. Salisbury was executed by the queen's command on the following day and his head placed beside that of the Duke of York, which was still surmounted by its paper crown, "in derision of his pretended title." This further cruelty was equally needless as excessive, since the unhappy earl, already languishing from the effects of a wound, would scarcely have survived to endure the threatened horrors of captivity, but with blind fury Margaret "disgraced her triumph, and that of the house of Lancaster," by such acts as these; and "spent her time in the execution of her prisoners, instead of improv- ing her victory by rapid advances toward the capital." But