Advancing uphill with the sun on their backs, squashed between the funnelling Portuguese defensive works and their own advancing rear, and under a heavy rain of English longbowmen's arrows shot from behind the Portuguese line and crossbow quarrels from behind both the Sweethearts' and the Honeysuckle wings on their flanks, the Castilians fought to win the day. The Castilian knights in the main body were forced to dismount and break in half their four-metre-long lances in order to join the constricted melèe alongside their infantry.