If your husbands shoot you we are not to blame." Bacon has been censured for this ungallant strategy; but it worked well and saved his workmen from further annoyance.

He sent one of the good-wives into the town under a flag of truce to inform her own and the others' husbands, that he meant to place them "in the forefront of his workmen," during the construction of the earth-works, and if they fired on them, the good-wives would suffer.
No attack was made on Bacon until the earth-works were completed, and then the women were sent to their homes during the night.

Next morning at early dawn, Berkeley sounded his battle-cry, and his men mustered at the roll of the drum.

Bacon was on the alert.

His eagle eye glanced along his earth-works and the gallant men enrolled under him.
"They are coming! They are coming with their whole force!" he shouted, as he stood on the ramparts, his sword in his hand and his eye flashing with the glorious light of battle.