He appears before the capital.

Gathering a small force, to which he added as he marched, he came rapidly across the country, and appeared before the capital just as the Governor had finished his hurried preparations for defence by running a palisade across the neck of Jamestown peninsula. Before the besieged enemy knew his whereabouts, for he had moved "with a marvellous celerity, outstripping the swift wings of fame," they heard his trumpet blown from the high ground near the town, and the cannon shot with which he warned them of his presence. It was at sunset that he appeared before the palisades; and by the morning his men were sheltered behind earthworks, which they had finished in apparent carelessness of the "3 grate guns" the Governor had planted on his ramparts, and of the ships, lying" almost close aborde the shore. . . . with their broade sides, to thunder upon him if he should offer to make an onslaute.'

An account hostile to Bacon avers that he made up for "the paucity of his numbers" by a stratagem that was anything but creditable. Sending some of his horse to scour the country near at hand, he ordered them to take and bring to him certain gentlewomen living near by, whose husbands were in the town, that he might hold hostages, as it were, to secure the granting of all his demands. When they arrived, he "sends one of them to inform her owne and the others Husbands, for what purposes he had brought them into the camp, namely, to be placed in the fore frunt of his men at such time as those in town should sally forth upon him." According to the writer of this story, which is not elsewhere confirmed, " these Ladyes white Aprons naturally "became of grater force to keep the besieged from falling out, than his works (a pitiful trench);" and either "these considerations or some others. . . . kep their swords in their scabbards." Yet he goes on to say that the gentlewomen were after all soon taken out of danger, but that a party sent out by Berkeley to make an attack on Bacon's works, "went out with heavie harts, but returned home with light heels; were, in short, driven back disgracefully by the Baconites, to the disgust of the Governor," which he exprest in som passionate terms."

The next day, when Bacon mounted three guns upon his works, actually to begin the reduction of the place, Berkeley and his adherents gave up all hope of a successful defence. Before the rebels had fired a single damaging shot, the fleet dropped silently down the river, under cover of the darkness, carrying Governor, officials, troops, townspeople, and even their household goods, and leaving Jamestown a mere collection of empty houses.

When Bacon entered, the next morning, he found a deserted capital, the guns spiked, and nothing left but a few horses, "two or three

1676.] BACON RECAPTURES AND BURNS JAMESTOWN.

burned.

311

sellers [cellars] of wine, and some small quantity of Indian Corne with a grate many tanned hides." No army could subsist upon such plunder; nor would it have profited Bacon to hold the Jamestown empty place. A council was called; and though among his taken and people there were many property-holders of the town, it was decided to destroy it, that it might not serve again as a harbor for the enemy. Lawrence and Drummond applied the torch to their own houses, at nightfall; and that night Sir William Berkeley, lying at anchor twenty miles below, saw the dark sky lighted by the flames of the first English town built in America, the historic settlement of Smith, Newport, and Wingfield. The destruction was complete, "not so much as sparing the church-and the first that ever was in Virginia." Nor was the place ever rebuilt.

Bacon again in power.

Crossing the long peninsula between the James and York, Bacon now established himself at Gloucester Point, expecting to be attacked there by Colonel Brent, who was known to be approaching from Northern Virginia, at the head of a thousand men. But this attack, says a contemporary, "like the hoggs the devill sheared, produced more noyse than wool; " for Brent's men nearly all deserted before they came in face of the enemy advancing to meet them, and left their leader "mightily astonished." Bacon was thus left free to attempt once more the organization and quieting of the province; and began it by calling a convention of the uncertain peo

ple of Gloucester County, to whom he administered the oath before resolved upon. Then, yearning to make his Indian victories even more final and complete, he began to plan another expedition into the interior.

While thus engaged, a trifling illness which he had neglected in the

despite all the efforts of his people, nothing checked the course of his disease. And so, says his hostile biographer, not without an unholy exultation, "all his strength and provissions being spent, [he] surrendered up that Fort he was no longer able

Death of
Bacon

1676.]

CLOSE OF THE REBELLION.

313

to keepe, into the hands of that grim and all conquering Captaine, Death." He died on the first day of October, 1676, in the house of Dr. Pate, near Gloucester. His burial-place was kept a secret that has never been revealed.1

The insurrection

leader.

The command of Bacon's forces passed into the hands of his lieutenant-general, Joseph Ingram; but the dead leader had left no one behind who was precisely fitted to take his place. without a Lawrence and Drummond, wise advisers as they had proved themselves, had not the influence of their more active associate over his followers; and the loss of the energetic and brave commander dealt the revolution a blow from which it could not rise. The speedy capture and execution of several leading insurgents, by a party of Berkeley's adherents, served to intensify the despondency and panic that prevailed among the great body of the Baconites; and in the country at large the rebellion suddenly died. A large part of the insurgents scattered quickly to their homes, following the impulse to The closing save themselves from the fate of a lost cause; and only the scenes. leaders, the men who had the courage of their convictions, or for whom pardon was believed to be impossible, were left with a small force to make a final struggle.

Ingram established himself at West Point, on the upper York River, a place which Bacon himself had designed to make his "prime Randevouze, or place of Retreat," because of its natural facilities for

1 The grief of Bacon's friends and the joy of his enemies have each left a rhymed epitaph, that show the fervor with which he was both loved and hated, and correspond to the two views that have been and are still taken of his action and his restless life :

While none shall dare his obseques to sing

In desarved measures; untill time shall bring
Truth crowned with freedom, and from danger free
To sound his praises to posterity.

Here let him rest; while wee this truth report
Hee 's gone from hence unto a higher Court
To plead his Cause where he by this doth know
Whether to Ceaser hee was friend or foe."

In the other epitaph is lavished a flood of abuse on

his flagitious name"

"The braines to plot, the hands to execute
Projected ills, Death Joyntly did nonsute

At his black Bar. And what no Baile could save

He hath committed Prissoner to the Grave;

From whence there's no reprieve. Death keep him close,

We have too many Divells still goe loose."

:

defence. Here the principal insurgents gathered; but there were smaller bodies at Greenspring, a place belonging to Berkeley himself, somewhat further down the river; and at an estate belonging to Bacon's cousin, probably in the same neighborhood. The whole insurgent force remaining under arms to garrison these three final strongholds probably numbered not more than four hundred men; while in the region about them - now that the death of Bacon led to the appearance of a host of concealed adherents of the Governor, and time-servers who wished to seem so there were at least as many enemies as friends.

Berkeley lost little time in taking advantage of the new turn of

affairs. His first step, when the news of Bacon's death had reached him, had been the sending out of that party which, as already mentioned, had captured and executed several leading revolutionists. But he was making preparations to return in person when he dispatched this preliminary expedition," a winged messinger, to see if happily the Delluge was any whit abated." Then he ventured out from his "Ark" at Accomac, and appeared in the York River with four ships and "two or three sloops," carrying a force of some one hundred and fifty men. From the people along the lower York he met with no resistance; his return appeared to be taken as a matter of course; and his adherents in Gloucester County volunteered in large numbers