In mid-May 1264 Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, gambled.
As English King Henry III pushed north from Hastings toward London, Montfort broke off his siege of the castle at Rochester and moved south to Fletching. After praying there in the church of St. Andrew and St. Mary the Virgin, he marched his troops another 8 miles across the East Sussex countryside and, during the night of May 13/14, toward Offham Hill, a 400-foot prominence rising from the downs. In its shadow, at the Priory of St. Pancras in Lewes, slumbered the king, amid an army already close to double the size of Montfort’s and awaiting the arrival of additional mercenary troops sent by Henry’s queen and consort, Eleanor of Provence.
Montfort’s bid for the heights, in the words of author and historian Thomas Costain, called for “magnificent audacity.”
Were the king’s men blocking the routes leading to the summit, Montfort could lose everything—his force defeated, his rebellion destroyed, he himself killed or imprisoned. Were the passes open, he would gain the high ground, and Henry’s large army would at least be forced to fight uphill.
It was perhaps Montfort’s only chance for victory.
Nothing but darkness and stillness greeted the earl’s men as they climbed, Montfort riding at the fore, alert for any sound—a voice, a cough, the whinny of a horse, a dropped gauntlet—any stirring that would reveal the presence of royal guards. But they encountered only one sleeping
