Chapter XV: The Norman Invasion and the Campaign of Hastings.1055 (3)

Such a post as this, strong by nature and standing directly in the face of the enemy, exactly suited Harold’s objects. And the approach to it was equally unsuited to the objects of William. Seven miles of hill and dale form the present road from Hastings to Battle. But the Norman army, in its advance from Hastings, would have to spread itself over the whole country, a country where marsh and wood doubtless alternated, except so far as their own ravages had done something to clear their path. The ground immediately around Senlac is specially broken and rolling, and the lower land close at the foot of the hill, which must in many parts have been utterly trackless, was doubtless, in an October of those days, a mere quagmire. It is only where the present road enters the town of Battle that a sort of low isthmus of somewhat higher and firmer ground forms a slight connexion between Senlac and the opposite hills to the south. Through all this difficult country the Normans had to make their way to the foot of the English position. And there they would find, not only a post of great natural strength, but something which was not without reason called a fortress. Harold entrenched himself [Sidenote: Harold fortifies the hill. Defences of the English camp.] behind defences, not indeed equal to those of Arques[1262] or Old Sarum, but perhaps nearly equal to those of William’s own camp at Hastings. He occupied the hill; he surrounded it on all its accessible sides by a threefold palisade, with a triple gate of entrance, and defended it to the south by an artificial ditch.[1263] The name of the Watch-Oak is still borne by a tree on the isthmus. In that quarter no attack was to be feared, and the defences were there probably less diligently cared for. The royal Standard was planted just where the ground begins to slope to the south-east, the point most directly in the teeth of the advancing enemy. Within the fortress thus formed, the King of the English and his army awaited the approach of the invaders.

Of the numbers of the host gathered within this narrow compass we have, as we have seen, no certain account. While the English writers naturally diminish, the Norman [Sidenote: Stories of desertions; their probable origin.] writers as naturally magnify their numbers.[1264] The English writers further tell us that, on account of the straitness of the post, many of the English deserted.[1265] It may be so; but it should be again remembered that, with the tactics which Harold had chosen, overwhelming numbers were not desirable. Enough of good troops to hold the hill against the enemy were better than a vast host of tumultuary levies. We can well believe that the population of the neighbouring country flocked to the Standard in far greater numbers than at all suited the King’s purpose. The services of some volunteers may have been rejected; some may have turned away when they saw the peculiar nature of the service required of them, a kind of service which we can well conceive to have been neither attractive nor intelligible to raw levies. But it is certain that, whatever was the number of the troops who remained or who were retained, little could be said against their quality. We shall see that the Housecarls, the main core of the army, retained their old reputation to the last, and the fault even of the irregular levies was certainly not that of a lack of mere courage.[1266]

[Sidenote: Stories of further messages, spies, &c.]

It does not appear that any long time passed between Harold’s occupation of his hill fortress and the battle itself. The spot was not one in which a large body of men could remain for any length of time; on the other hand the invaders could not remain altogether inactive, neither could they pass by the English position without attacking it. And that position, after all, was not a regular castle to be reduced by a regular siege. Immediate battle was absolutely inevitable on both sides. Everything in our narratives leads us to believe that the battle followed almost immediately on the arrival of Harold at Senlac. The hill seems to have been occupied on the Friday, and [Sidenote: Report of the English spy, who takes the shaven Normans for priests.] the fight we know began the next morning. Spies were sent out on both sides,[1267] and there is nothing impossible in the well-known tale that the English spy, struck by the unusual aspect of the closely-shaven Normans, reported to his sovereign that the French host contained more priests than soldiers. Harold, we are told, answered with a laugh that the French priests would be found to be valiant warriors [Sidenote: Tale of a dispute between Harold and Gyrth.] indeed.[1268] But much less faith is due to the legend that Harold and Gyrth themselves rode forth to spy out the invading army, that Harold proposed to fall back on London, that Gyrth dissuaded him from such a course, that the two brothers quarrelled and nearly fought, but that they came back to the camp without letting any sign of their dispute appear to any one else.[1269] Nothing can be less trustworthy than these Norman reports of things which are said to have taken place within the English camp. No power short of divination could have revealed to any Norman witness a private conversation and a private [Sidenote: William’s last message.] quarrel between the English King and his brother. A somewhat greater degree of attention is due to the story that William, even at the last moment, after the English camp was actually pitched on Senlac, still made one last attempt at negotiation.[1270] If such an attempt was made, it was of course made with no hope and no thought on William’s part of its leading to any peaceful arrangement between himself and his rival. William’s object must have been to keep up to the last the character of one making a legal and righteous claim, a claim which nothing but a necessity beyond his control drove him into asserting by force. And, by the peculiar form of message which is said to have been sent, he might well have hoped to spread fear and disunion through the English army. He is said to have first invited Harold to a personal interview at some point between Hastings and Senlac, with a few followers only on either side. Gyrth is said to have answered for his brother, refusing any personal conference, and bidding William send to the camp whatever message he thought good. [Sidenote: Three choices offered to Harold.] The message came. It offered a choice of three things. Let Harold resign the Kingdom according to his oath. Let Harold and his house hold the Kingdom under William, Harold as Under-king of the Northumbrians, Gyrth as [Sidenote: Challenge to single combat.] Earl of the West-Saxons.[1271] Failing either of these offers, let Harold come forth and meet William in single combat. The Crown of England should be the prize of the victor, and the followers of both combatants should depart unhurt. [Sidenote: William’s object in the message.] [Sidenote: The policy of all these proposals is manifest. Their object] was to make the strife appear a mere personal quarrel between Harold and William, instead of an attack made by the Duke of the Normans on the land and people of England. And the proposal that the two princes should spare the blood of their armies, and decide their difference in their own persons, had a specious look of humanity. [Sidenote: Harold refuses the challenge; his grounds of refusal.] But Harold and Gyrth had seen far too much of the world to be taken in in this way. Harold could not separate himself from his people. His cause was theirs and their cause was his. When the Duke of the Normans attacked the King whom the English nation had chosen, he attacked the nation itself. The Crown was Harold’s by their gift; but it was not Harold’s in any such sense that he could stake it on the result of a single combat, any more than he could stake it on a throw of the dice. A single combat between Harold and William would of course involve the death of one or other of the combatants. Neither King nor Duke was a man likely to cry craven. What then if William slew Harold? His right to the English Crown would be no better than it was before. Englishmen, with arms in their hands, were not likely to submit to the judgement of such an ordeal. William would still have had to fight;—he would no doubt have been able to fight at a great advantage, but he would still have had to fight—against Gyrth, Eadgar, Eadwine, Waltheof, any one whom the English people chose to place at their head. If, on the other hand, Harold slew William, it was, if possible, even less likely that the mingled host which came from all the lands beyond the sea for spiritual and temporal gains would at once quietly go back to the various homes from which they had come. The challenge was simply a blind, and Harold did only his duty in refusing to be bound by such a false issue, and in saying that God alone must judge between him and his foe.

[Sidenote: Further doubtful details of the messages.]

Our accounts of these messages are so confused and contradictory that it is impossible to feel thorough confidence whether any messages were really sent at this stage of the story or not. We are told that, either now or at some earlier time, William offered Harold the option of a legal judgement on the points at issue between them. Let their quarrel be decided either by the laws of Normandy or by the laws of England, or by the Pope and his clergy at Rome.[1272] Here again we see the same sort of fallacy at work as in the challenge to single combat. The Crown of England could not be adjudged according to any rules of Norman Law or by the award of any Norman tribunal. As for English Law, the Assembly which alone had power to deal with the question, had dealt with it nine months before. Those who had then given their votes for Harold were now there present to enforce those votes axe in hand. The appeal to the Roman See was a still more transparent fallacy. William and his host knew well, and Harold and his host no doubt also knew well, that the sentence of Rome had already gone forth against England, and that the consecrated banner of the Apostle was at that moment in the Norman camp. In another version we hear, not of a proposed appeal to the Apostolic throne, but of a solemn warning that Harold and all his followers were already excommunicated by the Apostolic sentence. Dismay, we are told, was spread through the English host, and men began to shrink from the coming battle. Gyrth once more steps forth as the good genius of his brother and of his country. His voice and his arguments again bring back the courage and the hopes of the English army.[1273] We may give to these tales such amount of belief as we may think good. But we may be sure that the day before the battle was spent on both sides in diligent preparation for the work that was to come on the morrow.

§ 4. _The Battle. October 14, 1066._

[Sidenote: The night before the battle. Friday, October 13.]

And now the night came on, the night of Friday the thirteenth of October, the night which was to usher in the ever-memorable morn of Saint Calixtus. Very different, according to our Norman informants, was the way in which that night was spent by the two armies. The English spent the night in drinking and singing,[1274] the Normans in [Sidenote: Devotion of the Normans.] prayer and confession of their sins.[1275] Among the crowds of clergy in William’s host were two Prelates of all but the highest rank in the Norman Church.[1276] One was Geoffrey, Bishop of Coutances, who in his temporal character was soon to have so large a share of the spoils of England.[1277] The other was the Duke’s own half-brother, the famous Odo, who, to his Bishop’s seat at Bayeux, was soon to add the temporal cares of the Kentish Earldom.[1278] Under the pious care of the two Bishops and of the other clergy, the Norman host seems to have been wrought up to a sort of paroxysm of devotion. Odo extracted from every man a special vow, that those who survived the struggle of the coming Saturday would never again eat flesh on any Saturday that was to come.[1279] Tales like these are the standing accusations which the victors always [Sidenote: The night said to be spent by the English in drinking and singing.] bring against the vanquished. The reproach which is cast on the English host on the night before the fight of Senlac is also cast on the French host on the night before the fight of Azincourt.[1280] And yet there may well be some groundwork of truth in these stories. The English were not, like the Normans, fighting under the influence of that strange spiritual excitement which had persuaded men that an unprovoked aggression on an unoffending nation was in truth a war of religion, a Crusade for the good of the souls of Normans and English alike. It may therefore well be that there was more of ceremonial devotion in the camp of William than in the camp of Harold. And yet even a Norman legend gives us a picture of the English King bending before the Body of his Lord,[1281] and Englishmen may deem that the prayers and blessings of Ælfwig and Leofric were at least as holy and as acceptable as the prayers and blessings of Geoffrey and Odo. And we must not forget that the devotions of William and his followers are recorded by William’s own chaplain and flatterer, while no narrative of that night’s doings survives from the pen of any canon of Waltham or any monk of the New Minster. And we shall hardly deem the worse of our countrymen, if that evening’s supper by the camp-fires was enlivened by the spirit-stirring strains of old Teutonic minstrelsy. Never again were those ancient songs to be uttered by the mouth of English warriors in the air of a free and pure Teutonic England. They sang, we well may deem, the song of Brunanburh and the song of Maldon; they sang how Æthelstan conquered and how Brihtnoth fell; and they sang, it well may be, in still louder notes, the new song which the last English gleeman had put into their mouths,

“How the wise King
Made fast his realm
To a high-born man,
Harold himself,
The noble Earl.”[1282]

And thoughts and words like these may have been as good a preparation for the day of battle as all the pious oratory with which the warlike Prelate of Bayeux could hound on the spoilers on their prey.

[Sidenote: BATTLE OF SENLAC. Saturday, October 14.]

The morning of the decisive day at last had come. The Duke of the Normans heard mass, and received the communion in both kinds,[1283] and drew forth his troops for their [Sidenote: William’s speech to his army.] march against the English post. As usual, an exhortation from the general went before any military action. The topics for a speech made by William to his army were obvious.[1284] He came to maintain his just right to the English Crown; he came to punish the perjury of Harold and the older crime of Godwine against his kinsman Ælfred. The safety of his soldiers and the honour of their country were in their own hands; defeated, they had no hope and no retreat; conquerors, the glory of victory and the spoils of England lay before them. But of victory there could be no doubt; God would fight for those who fought for the righteous cause, and what people could ever withstand the Normans in war? They were the descendants of the men who had won Neustria from the Frank, and who had reduced Frankish Kings to submit to the most humiliating of treaties.[1285] He, their Duke, and they his subjects, had themselves conquered at Mortemer and at Varaville.[1286] Were they to yield to the felon[1287] English, never renowned in war, whose country had been over and over again harried and subdued by the invading Dane? Let them lift up their banners and march on; let them spare no man in the hostile ranks; they were marching on to certain victory, and the fame of their exploits would resound from one end of heaven to the other.[1288]

The faithful William Fitz-Osbern now rode up to the mound on which his sovereign stood,[1289] and warned him that [Sidenote: The army marches to Telham.] there was no time to tarry.[1290] Kindled by the exhortations of their leader, the host marched on. They made their way, perhaps in no very certain order, till, from the hill of Telham or Heathland, they first came in sight of the [Sidenote: The knights arm.] English encamped on the opposite height of Senlac.[1291] The knights, who had ridden from Hastings in a lighter garb, and probably on lighter horses, now put on their full armour, and mounted their war-steeds. The Duke now [Sidenote: Incident of the reversed hauberk.] called for his harness. His coat of mail was brought forth; but in putting it on, by some accident, the fore part was turned hindmost. Many a man would have been embarrassed at the evil omen, and in truth the hearts of many of William’s followers sank.[1292] But his own ready wit never failed him; he was as able to turn the accident to his advantage as when he first took seizin of the soil of Sussex.[1293] The omen, he said, was in truth a good one; as the hauberk had been turned about, so he who bore [Sidenote: William in full harness.] it would be turned from a Duke into a King.[1294] Now fully armed, he called for his war-horse. His noble Spanish steed, the gift of his ally King Alfonso,[1295] was brought forth. The horse was led by the aged Walter Giffard, the Lord of Longueville, the hero of Arques and of Mortemer. He had made the pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint James of Compostella, and he had brought the gallant beast as a worthy offering for a prince who was the mirror of knighthood.[1296] William now sprang on his horse’s back, and, now ready for battle, he paused for a moment at the head of his host. His gallant equipment and bearing called forth the admiration of all around him, and a spokesman for their thoughts was found in Hamon, the Viscount of the distant Thouars.[1297] He spoke no doubt the words of all, when he said that never had such a knight been seen under heaven, and that the noble Count would become a nobler King.[1298]

And now the Duke, fully armed, looked forth upon the [Sidenote: Vital brings the news of the English army.] English encampment. At that moment Vital, a follower of his brother the Bishop, one whose name is written in Domesday, rode up to his sovereign. He had been one of those who were sent forth to spy out the English host; and William now asked him what he had seen and where the English usurper was to be found. Vital told him that Harold stood among the thick ranks which crowned the summit of the hill, for there, so he deemed, he had seen the [Sidenote: William vows to build a monastery on Senlac, if victorious.] royal Standard.[1299] Then the Duke vowed his vow, that if God would give him victory over his perjured foe, he would, on the spot where that Standard stood, raise a mighty minster to his honour.[1300] Among those who heard him [Sidenote: William Faber prays that it may be in honour of Saint Martin.] was a monk, William by name, who had come from the house of Marmoutiers, nestled far away beneath its cliffs by the banks of the rushing Loire. Men called him _Faber_, the wright or smith, because in other days, before he had put the cowl upon him, he had shown his skill in forging arrows for the service of the craft of the woods.[1301] He now stepped forward, and craved that the holy house which the Duke would ere long raise on yonder height should be raised in honour of the renowned Saint Martin, the great Apostle of the Gauls.[1302] The Prince of the Cenomannians owed spiritual allegiance to the metropolitan throne of Tours; he said that it should be as his monastic namesake craved, and in after days the height of Senlac was crowned with the Abbey of Saint Martin of the Place of Battle.

[Sidenote: Threefold division of the army.]

The vow was spoken, and William and his host now marched on in full battle array. The army was ranged in three divisions, corresponding, whether by accident or by design, with the geographical position of each contingent in its own land.[1303] To the left were the Bretons, the Poitevins, the men of Maine, under the command of Alan of [Sidenote: The left, Bretons, &c., under Alan.] Britanny.[1304] He and his might deem that, in following the banner of their own Norman conquerors, they were avenging a far earlier wrong, that they were coming to wreak on the Teutonic occupants of the greater Britain a tardy vengeance for the conquest which had driven their own forefathers to the shores of the lesser. Yet Alan might have paused to remember how his own ancestor and namesake had found in an English King his truest champion against the Norman enemy,[1305] and he might have hesitated before striking a blow to bring both Britains into one common bondage. And with Alan rode a man of mingled birth, whose name will again meet us in our history, but as one branded with the twofold infamy of a man false alike [Sidenote: Ralph of Norfolk.] to his native country and to its foreign King. There, the only English traitor in that motley host, rode Ralph of Norfolk, Ralph of Wader, son of an English father and a Breton mother, who now came among the forces of his maternal country to win back the lands which some unrecorded [Sidenote: The right wing; the French and other mercenaries under Roger of Montgomery.] treason had lost him.[1306] Far to the right rode a more honourable foe. There was the post of Roger of Montgomery, whose name has already so often met us in our Norman story, who now came to be the founder of a mighty house in the conquered island, to be honoured with English Earldoms, and to leave the name of his Lexovian hill and manor as the name of a borough and a shire among the twice conquered Cymry.[1307] Under him marched the mercenary French, the men of Boulogne and Poix, and all who, from that region, followed Duke William for hire or for hope of plunder.[1308] With Roger was joined in command one who bore a name soon to be as renowned in England and in Flanders as it already was in Normandy, but a name which, after all its bearer’s exploits, has utterly passed away, while that of his colleague [Sidenote: William Fitz-Osbern.] has been so marvellously abiding. For with Roger rode William Fitz-Osbern, the Duke’s earliest and dearest friend, the son of the man who had saved his life in childhood,[1309] the man who had himself been the first to cheer on his master to his great enterprise, and to exhort the nobles of Normandy to follow their lord beyond the [Sidenote: Eustace of Boulogne.] sea.[1310] And there too, among the mingled bands on the right wing, rode one whom England might well curse more bitterly than any other man in the invading host. There rode one who had been honoured with the hand of a daughter of England, who had been enriched with the wealth of England in the days of his royal kinsman, and who now came to seek for a richer and more lasting share of her plunder in the wake of her open enemy. Eustace of Boulogne, the man whose crime had led to the banishment of England’s noblest sons, the man who had murdered unarmed Englishmen on their own hearthstones,[1311] now came to feel what was the might of Englishmen harnessed for the battle, and to show himself the one man in either [Sidenote: The Normans in the centre.] host whose heart was accessible to craven fear. And in the centre, between Breton and Picard, just as Normandy lies between Britanny and Picardy, marched the flower of [Sidenote: The men of Coutances] the host, the native Normans.[1312] Furthest to the left, next in order to their Breton neighbours, marched the only band who had an ancestral grudge against England, the only men in William’s host who came to revenge the devastation of their own land by English hands. The valiant men of the Constantine peninsula, the descendants of the Danes of Harold Blaatand, were there under the command of Neal of Saint Saviour.[1313] The rebel of Val-ès-Dunes now followed his lord in his great enterprise; the namesake and descendant of him who had beaten off the host of Æthelred now came to wreak a tardy vengeance on Englishmen in [Sidenote: and Bayeux.] their own land. Next to the forces of the Côtentin came a band whom the men of Wessex and East-Anglia might well nigh claim as countrymen, the Saxons and Danes of the land of Bayeux, among whom, even then, some relics of Teutonic speech and even of heathen worship may perchance have lingered. They came ready and eager to deal hand-strokes [Sidenote: The archers of Evreux.] with the bravest of the English, while the men of Louviers and Evreux came with their unerring bows, and their arrows destined to pierce many an English eye.[1314] The [Sidenote: Armour and weapons of the Normans.] archers were all but universally on foot; the Parthian horse-bowman was not absolutely unknown to Norman tactics, but such an union of characters did not extend to any considerable portion of the army.[1315] For the most part the archers were without defensive harness; they were clad in mere jerkins, with caps on their heads, but a few wore the defences common to the horse and foot of both armies. These were the close-fitting coat of mail reaching to the knees and elbows, and the conical helmet without crest or other ornament, and with no protection for the face except the nose-piece. The horses had, unlike the practice of after times, no artificial defence of any kind.[1316] Their riders, in helmets and coats of mail, bore the kite-shaped shield, and were armed with long lances, not laid in the rest as in the equipment of the later chivalry, but lifted high in air over the bearer’s shoulder. For close combat they had the heavy straight sword; the battle-axe is not shown on the Norman side, and two men only in the host are represented as wielding the terrible mace. Those two men formed the [Sidenote: The Papal banner and the group round it.] innermost centre of the advancing host. There, in the midst of all, the guiding star of the whole army, floated the consecrated banner, the gift of Rome and of Hildebrand, the ensign by whose presence wrong was to be hallowed into right. And close beneath its folds rode the two master-spirits of the whole enterprise, kindred alike in [Sidenote: The Duke himself.] blood, in valour, and in crime. There rode the chief of all, the immediate leader of that choicest and central division, the mighty Duke himself. And we may be sure that it was not only by the voice of flattery, but in the words of truth and soberness, that there, amid the choicest chivalry of Europe, the Bastard of Falaise was hailed as bearing the stoutest heart and the strongest arm among them all. Mounted on his stately horse, the gift of the Spanish King, he rode beneath the banner of the Apostle, the leader and the moving spirit of the whole host. No man could bend his bow,[1317] but on that day he bore [Sidenote: His mace.] a weapon fitted only for the closest and most deadly conflict;

οὕνεκ’ ἄρ’ οὐ τόξοισι μαχέσκετο δουρί τε μακρῷ,
ἀλλὰ σιδηρείῃ κορύνῃ ῥήγνυσκε φάλαγγας.[1318]

The most authentic record of that day’s fight arms him neither with sword nor spear, but sets before us the iron mace of the Bastard as the one weapon fit to meet, man to man, and prince to prince, with the two-handed axe of Harold.[1319] Round his neck, we are told, were hung, as a hallowed talisman, the choicest of the relics on which the King of the English was said to have sworn his fatal oath.[1320] [Sidenote: Bishop Odo.] Close at his side, and armed with the same fearful weapon, rode one whose name was soon to be joined with his own in the mouths of Englishmen, and who was to win a far deeper share of English hatred than the mighty Conqueror himself. Odo, the warrior-Prelate of Bayeux, rode in full armour by the side of his brother and sovereign, as eager and ready as William himself to plunge wherever in the fight danger should press most nearly. To shed blood by sword or spear was a sin against the Church’s canons, but to crush head-piece and head with the war-club was, in Odo’s eyes, no breach of the duties of a minister of peace. The two mighty brethren, Duke and Bishop, formed the [Sidenote: Robert of Mortain.] central figures of the group. And hard by them[1321] rode a third brother of less renown, a third son of the Tanner’s daughter, Robert of Mortain, the lord of the castle by the waterfalls,[1322] he who was soon to have a larger share than any other man of the spoils of England,[1323] and to add to his Earldom by the Breton march the more famous [Sidenote: The Standard borne by Toustain of Bec.] Earldom of the kindred land of Cornwall. Fast by the three brethren the consecrated banner was borne by Toustain the White, the son of Rou, a knight of the less [Sidenote: Refusal of Ralph of Toesny and Walter Giffard to carry it.] famous Bec in the land of Caux.[1324] Two men of higher rank and of greater age had already declined that honourable office. Ralph of Conches or of Toesny, the heir of the proud line of Malahulc,[1325] the man who had perhaps borne to King Henry the news of the night of Mortemer,[1326] held, among his other dignities, the hereditary right to bear the banner of his lord in the day of battle.[1327] But on that day that honour was something from which men shrank as keeping them back from the more active duties of the fight. Ralph of Toesny would not encumber his hands with anything, not even with the banner of the Apostle, if it were to stay his sword from smiting the foe without mercy.[1328] So too spake the famous Walter Giffard of Longueville.[1329] Even in the days of Arques and Mortemer he was an aged man, and now he was old indeed; his hair was white, his arm was failing.[1330] He would deal blows on that day with such strength as his years had left him, but the long labour of carrying the standard could be borne [Sidenote: The Norman chivalry.] only by a younger man. Thick around Toustain and the chiefs beside whom he rode, were gathered the chivalry of Normandy, the future nobility of England, the men who made their way into our land by wrong and robbery, but whose children our land won to her own heart, and changed the descendants of the foemen of Pevensey and Senlac into the men who won the Great Charter and dictated the Provisions of Oxford. Time would fail to tell of all; but a few [Sidenote: William Patry.] names must not be passed by.[1331] There was William Patry of La Lande, who in old time had received Earl Harold as a guest, and who now rode by William’s side, swearing that he would meet his lord’s rival face to face, and would deal to him the reward of his perjury.[1332] And there too rode [Sidenote: Roger the Bigod.] men of nobler and of more lasting name. There rode Roger the Bigod, son of the poor serving-knight of William of Mortain, whose presence in the hostile ranks we can well forgive, as we hail in him the forefather of that great house whose noblest son defied the greatest of England’s later Kings in the cause of the liberties of England.[1333] [Sidenote: William Malet.] And one there was in that host, well nigh the only Norman on whom Englishmen can look with personal sympathy and honour, William Malet,[1334] a man perchance born of an English mother, one connected at all events by some tie of spiritual or temporal kindred with England and with Harold, and one who on that day knew how to reconcile his duty as a Norman subject with respect and honour towards the prince and towards the land to which that duty made him a foe.[1335] The names and the rewards of these men and of countless others are written in the great record of Domesday. The heroes who fought against them for hearth and home are nameless.

[Sidenote: Three kinds of troops in each division;]

The invading army was thus arranged in a threefold division according to the place of origin of each contingent. Each division again was ranged in a threefold order according to the nature of the troops which each contingent contained. [Sidenote: archers; heavy-armed foot; horsemen.] First in each division marched the archers, slingers, and cross-bow men, then the more heavily armed infantry, lastly the horsemen.[1336] The reason of this arrangement is obvious. [Sidenote: The order of the attack.] The light-armed were to do what they could with their missiles to annoy the English, and, if possible, to disorder their close array. On them followed the heavy infantry; they were to strive to break down the palisades of the English camp, and so to prepare the way for the charge of the horse. For William’s knights to charge up the slope of Senlac was in any case a hard task, but to charge up the slope, right in the teeth of Harold’s axes, with the shield-wall and the triple palisade still unbroken, would have been absolute madness. Because therefore William exposed his infantry to the first and most terrible danger, we are not justified in charging him with that brutal carelessness as to soldiers beneath the degree of knighthood or gentry, which was so often displayed by French commanders of later times. The two great captains who were that day matched together both knew their trade. The foresight of Harold had rendered William’s choicest troops absolutely useless, until after a struggle which could not fail to be attended with a frightful slaughter of his warriors of lower degree.

[Sidenote: The two armies in sight.]

The English host now looked down from the height of Senlac upon the advancing enemy. Like the Normans, they had risen early; they were now fully armed, and they stood ready and eager for battle.[1337] The King rode round his lines, and addressed to his men the speech expected from a [Sidenote: Harold’s speech.] general before action.[1338] The topics of Harold’s exhortation were as obvious as those of William’s. The English had simply to stand firm, and they were invincible; if they broke their ranks, they were lost. They fought for their country, their warfare was purely defensive, while Duke William had come from a foreign land to seek to conquer them. It was therefore for William to attack, for Harold simply to defend; he had therefore chosen a post where the whole work to be done was to defend it. The Normans were good and valiant horsemen; let them once pierce the English barrier, and it would be hard to drive them out again. But if the English kept their ranks, the Normans never could pierce the barrier. Their long lances would be of little avail in a combat on such ground as he had chosen for the fight. The English javelins would disorder their ranks as they advanced, and the axes would cleave them to the earth if they ventured on a hand to hand fight at the barricades.[1339] And now, as Vital had brought his news to [Sidenote: The English spy brings news.] William, so also an English spy brought to Harold the latest tidings of the array and the approach of the enemy. The King was still on his horse, his javelin in his hand, when the news was brought to him beneath the shadow of a tree—perhaps the hoar apple-tree which marked the place [Sidenote: He dismounts at the royal post.] of battle.[1340] When he had heard the tidings of his messenger, when he had surveyed and exhorted his whole army, the King rode to the royal post; he there dismounted, he took his place on foot, and prayed to God for help.[1341]

Thus far we have a natural and credible picture of the preparations of Harold and his host for the work of that awful day. But such a day was not likely to pass without [Sidenote: Tales of Harold and Gyrth.] its full accompaniment of legend and romance.[1342] Norman writers, strangely in the confidence of the English King, now tell us of dialogues between Harold and Gyrth; how, when the first division appeared on the crest of the hill, the King’s heart was lifted up as he looked at his own vast numbers, and how he despised the seemingly small band that came against him.[1343] But Gyrth, ever wise, bids him think of the valour and good array, the horses and the harness of the enemy, and to remember how large a part of his own army are but unarmed churls. Presently, as division after division appears on Telham and passes down into the lower ground, the King’s heart begins to quake. The Earl, an easy prophet after the fact, reproaches him with not having followed his counsel, with having refused to remain in London, and with having rashly staked everything on a single battle. Harold answers that it is Saturday, his lucky day, the day on which he was born, and the day which he had therefore chosen for his challenge.[1344] The calm intellect of Gyrth, like that of William, mocks at luck, and he reminds his brother that, if Saturday was the day of his birth, Saturday may also prove to be the day of his death. At last the whole ground between the heights is filled with the invading host; the banner of Saint Peter is seen floating over the central division. Then the King’s heart utterly fails him; he can hardly speak for fear and surprise; he can only mutter charges against Baldwin of Flanders for deceiving him by false statements, of which no mention is found elsewhere, as to the force which William would be likely to muster.[1345]

The credibility of a story of this kind is of the very lowest. Harold and Gyrth both died in the battle; they would at any rate keep their fears to themselves, and it is hard to see how their private talk could have come to the knowledge of the Norman poet. Besides this, Harold must, by this time at least, have known perfectly well the nature and number of the force that was coming against him. The very account in which we find all these stories tells us how well both sides had been served by spies and messengers.[1346] Each prince must have been thoroughly aware with what sort of an enemy he had to deal. There was enough indeed to make the stoutest heart in either army anxious; but of any feeling unworthy of a King or a soldier Harold and William were alike incapable. The proud horsemen and archers of Normandy might indeed, like the Medes of old, wonder at the tactics which opposed them without the help [Sidenote: The English on Senlac.] of bow or steed;[1347] but they could hardly, like their forerunners, impute madness to the immoveable wedge of men which, as if fixed to the ground by nature, covered every [Sidenote: Their defences and close array.] inch of the opposite hill. The whole height was alive with warriors; the slopes, strong in themselves, were still further strengthened by the firm barricades of ash and other timber, wattled in so close together that not a crevice could be seen. Up the slopes, through the barricades, the enemy had to make their way in the teeth of ranks of men, ranged so closely together in the thick array of the shield-wall, that while they simply kept their ground, the success of an assailant was hopeless.[1348] Every man, from the King [Sidenote: The whole army on foot.] downwards, was on foot. Those who rode to the field put their horses aside when the moment for actual fighting came.[1349] An English King was bound to expose his subjects to no danger from which he himself shrank, and, where the King fought, no man might dream of flight.[1350] This ancient national custom, adopted in earlier fights from choice and habit, was, in the post which Harold had chosen, a matter of absolute necessity. The work of that day was to defend a fortress, to stand firm, and to strike down at once any man who strove to make his way within [Sidenote: The light-armed to the left.] its wooden walls. To the south-west of the hill, beyond the isthmus, seem to have been placed the less trustworthy portions of the army, the sudden levies of the southern shires. These, like the Norman archers, had, for the most part, no [Sidenote: English armour and weapons.] defensive armour. Their weapons were of various kinds; the bow was the rarest of all;[1351] a few only were armed with swords or axes. Most of them had javelins or clubs, some had only such rustic weapons as forks and sharp stakes. Others seem to have retained some of the rudest arms of primitive days, and to have gone to battle with the stone hatchets or stone hammers which we commonly look on as belonging only to earlier and lower races than our own.[1352] But even such rude weapons as these would be of use in thrusting back the less efficient portion of the invaders, as they strove to climb the height or to break down the barricade. But it was not in troops or arms like these that Harold placed his main trust. The flower of the English army consisted of the King’s personal following, his picked men, who had been his comrades in all his wars, together with the chosen warriors of Kent, Essex, and London. These wore helmets and coats of mail hardly differing from those of the enemy. Their shields too were mostly of the same kite-shaped form, but a few of them vary from this type; some especially are round, with a boldly projecting boss, more like the shields of classical warfare. They carried, like the Romans, javelins to hurl at the beginning of the action, and heavier weapons for close combat. Some still retained the ancient broadsword, the weapon of Brunanburh, of Maldon, and of Assandun, but most of [Sidenote: The English axes.] them bore a weapon more terrible still, the long-handled axe wielded with both hands. The introduction of this arm was an innovation of the last fifty years. Its introduction was doubtless due to Cnut, but the axe was probably brought into more general use, and made more distinctly the national weapon, by Harold himself. The Norman writers seem almost to shudder at the remembrance of this fearful weapon, which, wielded by the arm of Harold, struck down horse and man at a single blow.[1353] It was in truth the perfection of a weapon of mere strength; no blow could be so crushing if the blow reached its aim; but swung in the air, as it was, with both hands, it left its wielder singularly exposed to missile weapons while in the act of striking the [Sidenote: The two ensigns;] blow.[1354] On the very crown of the hill, on the point where the ground begins to slope to the south-east, the point directly in the teeth of the advancing army, on the spot marked to after ages by the high altar of the abbey church of Battle, were planted the two-fold ensigns of England.[1355] [Sidenote: the Dragon;] There, high above the host, flashed the Dragon of Wessex, the sign which had led Englishmen to victory at Ethandun and at Brunanburh, at Penselwood and at Brentford, and which had sunk without dishonour in the last fight beneath the heights of Assandun.[1356] And now it came all glorious from the overthrow of the mightiest warrior of the North, to try the fortune of England against the subtler [Sidenote: the Standard of the Fighting Man.] arts of Gaul and Rome. There too was pitched the Standard, the personal ensign of the King, a glorious gonfanon, blazing with gems, and displaying, wrought in the purest gold, the old device of Eteoklos,[1357] the [Sidenote: The group round the Standard.] armed warrior advancing to the battle.[1358] Around this special post of honour and of danger were ranged the choicest warriors of England, the personal following of Harold and his house, their Thegns and their Housecarls, the men who had stormed the mountain-holds of Gruffydd and whose axes had cloven the shield-wall of Hardrada.[1359] And there, between the Dragon and the Standard, stood [Sidenote: The King and his kinsfolk.] the rising hopes of England’s newly-chosen dynasty. There, as the inner circle of the host, were ranged the fated warriors of the house of Godwine. Three generations of that great line were gathered beneath the Standard of its chief. There stood the aged Ælfwig, with his monk’s cowl beneath his helmet. There stood young Hakon the son of Swegen, atoning for his father’s crimes. And, closer still than all, the innermost centre of that glorious ring, stood the kingly three, brothers in life and death. There, in their stainless truth, stood Gyrth the counsellor and Leofwine the fellow-exile.[1360] And there, with his foot firm on his native earth, sharing the toils and dangers of his meanest soldier, with the kingly helm upon his brow and the two-handed axe upon his shoulder,[1361] stood Harold, King of the English.

The French army was now crossing the lower, but not level, ground which lies between Telham and Senlac. It is not strictly a plain, but rather a rolling country, with the ground rising and falling. Swampy as it still is in many places, to cross it, and that in the full harness of battle, must have added somewhat to the toils and difficulties of a march which had already led them from Hastings to Telham. Still all three divisions pressed vigorously on to [Sidenote: Points of attack of the three divisions.] the foot of the heights. Alan and his Bretons on the left, the division of William’s army which was most likely the least esteemed, had to make their attack on the least trustworthy portion of the English army. They had to make their way up the ground lying to the west of the present buildings of the abbey. There the ascent is easiest in itself, but it is defended by the small detached hill already spoken of,[1362] which was doubtless occupied as an English outpost. On the other hand, at the extreme right, Roger of Montgomery with his Frenchmen had to attack at the eastern and north-eastern points of the hill, perhaps over the ground ranging from the present road from Hastings nearly to the parish church of Battle. William himself and his native Normans took on them the heaviest task of [Sidenote: William himself against the Standard.] all. They were the centre, and their duty was to cut their way up the hill right to the Standard, in the teeth of King Harold himself and the picked men of the English host.

[Sidenote: Beginning of the battle.]

And now the fight began. It was one of the sacred hours of the Church, it was at the hour of prime, three [Sidenote: 9 A.M.] hours before noon-day,[1363] that the first blows were exchanged between the invaders and the defenders of England. The Normans had crossed the English fosse,[1364] and were now at the foot of the hill, with the palisades and the axes right before them. The trumpet sounded, and a flight of arrows from the archers in all the three divisions[1365] of William’s army was the prelude to the onslaught of the heavy-armed foot. [Sidenote: Exploits of Taillefer.] But, before the two armies met hand to hand, a juggler or minstrel, known as _Taillefer_, the Cleaver of Iron,[1366] rode forth from the Norman ranks as if to defy the whole force of England in his single person. He craved and obtained the Duke’s leave to strike the first blow; he rode forth, singing songs of Roland and of Charlemagne[1367]—so soon had the name and exploits of the great German become the spoil of the enemy. He threw his sword into the air and caught it again;[1368] but he presently showed that he could use warlike weapons for other purposes than for jugglers’ tricks of this kind; he pierced one Englishman with his lance, he struck down another with his sword, and then himself fell beneath the blows of their comrades. A bravado of this kind might serve as an omen, it might stir up the spirits of men on either side; but it could in no other way affect the fate of the battle. William was too wary a general to trust much to such [Sidenote: First attack.] knight-errantry as this. After the first discharge of arrows, the heavier foot followed to the attack, and the real struggle now began. The French infantry had to toil up the hill, and to break down the palisade, while a shower of stones and javelins disordered their approach,[1369] and while club, sword, and axe greeted all who came within the reach of hand-strokes. The native Normans had to do this in the face of the fiercest resistance, in the teeth of the heaviest axes, wielded by the hands of men with whom to fight had ever been to vanquish, the kinsmen and Thegns and Housecarls of King Harold. Their own missiles, hurled from below, could do comparatively little damage. Both sides fought with unyielding valour; [Sidenote: The war-cries.] the war-cries rose loud on either side;[1370] the Normans shouted “God help us;” the English, from behind their barricades, mocked with cries of “Out, out” every foe who entered or strove to enter.[1371] But our fathers also mingled piety with valour; they too called on holy names to help them in that day’s struggle.[1372] They raised their national war-cry of “God Almighty,”[1373] and in remembrance of the relic which their King so well loved to [Sidenote: The “Holy Cross” of Waltham.] honour, they called on the “Holy Cross,” the Holy Cross of Waltham, little knowing perhaps of the awful warning which that venerated rood had given to their King and to his people.[1374] The Norman infantry had now done its [Sidenote: Attack of the Norman horsemen.] best, but that best had been in vain. The choicest chivalry of Europe now pressed on to the attack.[1375] The knights of Normandy, and of all the lands from which men had flocked to William’s standard, now pressed on, striving to make what impression they could with the whole strength of themselves and their horses on the impenetrable fortress of timber, shields, and living warriors. But the advantage of ground enjoyed by the English, their greater physical strength and stature,[1376] the terrible weapons which they wielded, all joined to baffle every effort of Breton, Picard, Norman, and of the mighty Duke himself. Javelin and arrow had been tried in vain; every Norman missile had found an English missile to answer it.[1377] The lifted lances had been found wanting; the broad sword had clashed in vain against the two-handed axe;[1378] the maces of the Duke and of the Bishop had done their best. But few who came within the unerring sweep of [Sidenote: Success of Harold’s tactics; the attack beaten back.] an English axe ever lived to strike another blow. Rank after rank of the best chivalry of France and Normandy pressed on to the unavailing task. All was in vain; the old Teutonic tactics, carried on that day to perfection by the master-skill of Harold, proved too strong for the arts and the valour of Gaul and Roman. Not a man had swerved; not an inch of ground was lost; the shield-wall was still unbroken, and the Dragon of Wessex still soared unconquered over the hill of Senlac.