ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD THE SECOND, AND CONQUERED BY THE NORMANS
Harold was crowned King of England on the very day of the maudlin
Confessor’s funeral. He had good need to be quick about it. When the
news reached Norman William, hunting in his park at Rouen, he dropped
his bow, returned to his palace, called his nobles to council, and
presently sent ambassadors to Harold, calling on him to keep his oath
and resign the Crown. Harold would do no such thing. The barons of
France leagued together round Duke William for the invasion of England.
Duke William promised freely to distribute English wealth and English
lands among them. The Pope sent to Normandy a consecrated banner, and a
ring containing a hair which he warranted to have grown on the head of
Saint Peter. He blessed the enterprise; and cursed Harold; and
requested that the Normans would pay ‘Peter’s Pence’—or a tax to
himself of a penny a year on every house—a little more regularly in
future, if they could make it convenient.
King Harold had a rebel brother in Flanders, who was a vassal of Harold
Hardrada, King of Norway. This brother, and this Norwegian King,
joining their forces against England, with Duke William’s help, won a
fight in which the English were commanded by two nobles; and then
besieged York. Harold, who was waiting for the Normans on the coast at
Hastings, with his army, marched to Stamford Bridge upon the river
Derwent to give them instant battle.
He found them drawn up in a hollow circle, marked out by their shining
spears. Riding round this circle at a distance, to survey it, he saw a
brave figure on horseback, in a blue mantle and a bright helmet, whose
horse suddenly stumbled and threw him.
‘Who is that man who has fallen?’ Harold asked of one of his captains.
‘The King of Norway,’ he replied.
‘He is a tall and stately king,’ said Harold, ‘but his end is near.’
He added, in a little while, ‘Go yonder to my brother, and tell him, if
he withdraw his troops, he shall be Earl of Northumberland, and rich
and powerful in England.’
The captain rode away and gave the message.
‘What will he give to my friend the King of Norway?’ asked the brother.
‘Seven feet of earth for a grave,’ replied the captain.
‘No more?’ returned the brother, with a smile.
‘The King of Norway being a tall man, perhaps a little more,’ replied
the captain.
‘Ride back!’ said the brother, ‘and tell King Harold to make ready for
the fight!’
He did so, very soon. And such a fight King Harold led against that
force, that his brother, and the Norwegian King, and every chief of
note in all their host, except the Norwegian King’s son, Olave, to whom
he gave honourable dismissal, were left dead upon the field. The
victorious army marched to York. As King Harold sat there at the feast,
in the midst of all his company, a stir was heard at the doors; and
messengers all covered with mire from riding far and fast through
broken ground came hurrying in, to report that the Normans had landed
in England.
The intelligence was true. They had been tossed about by contrary
winds, and some of their ships had been wrecked. A part of their own
shore, to which they had been driven back, was strewn with Norman
bodies. But they had once more made sail, led by the Duke’s own galley,
a present from his wife, upon the prow whereof the figure of a golden
boy stood pointing towards England. By day, the banner of the three
Lions of Normandy, the diverse coloured sails, the gilded vanes, the
many decorations of this gorgeous ship, had glittered in the sun and
sunny water; by night, a light had sparkled like a star at her
mast-head. And now, encamped near Hastings, with their leader lying in
the old Roman castle of Pevensey, the English retiring in all
directions, the land for miles around scorched and smoking, fired and
pillaged, was the whole Norman power, hopeful and strong on English
ground.
Harold broke up the feast and hurried to London. Within a week, his
army was ready. He sent out spies to ascertain the Norman strength.
William took them, caused them to be led through his whole camp, and
then dismissed. ‘The Normans,’ said these spies to Harold, ‘are not
bearded on the upper lip as we English are, but are shorn. They are
priests.’ ‘My men,’ replied Harold, with a laugh, ‘will find those
priests good soldiers!’
‘The Saxons,’ reported Duke William’s outposts of Norman soldiers, who
were instructed to retire as King Harold’s army advanced, ‘rush on us
through their pillaged country with the fury of madmen.’
‘Let them come, and come soon!’ said Duke William.
Some proposals for a reconciliation were made, but were soon abandoned.
In the middle of the month of October, in the year one thousand and
sixty-six, the Normans and the English came front to front. All night
the armies lay encamped before each other, in a part of the country
then called Senlac, now called (in remembrance of them) Battle. With
the first dawn of day, they arose. There, in the faint light, were the
English on a hill; a wood behind them; in their midst, the Royal
banner, representing a fighting warrior, woven in gold thread, adorned
with precious stones; beneath the banner, as it rustled in the wind,
stood King Harold on foot, with two of his remaining brothers by his
side; around them, still and silent as the dead, clustered the whole
English army—every soldier covered by his shield, and bearing in his
hand his dreaded English battle-axe.
On an opposite hill, in three lines, archers, foot-soldiers, horsemen,
was the Norman force. Of a sudden, a great battle-cry, ‘God help us!’
burst from the Norman lines. The English answered with their own
battle-cry, ‘God’s Rood! Holy Rood!’ The Normans then came sweeping
down the hill to attack the English.
There was one tall Norman Knight who rode before the Norman army on a
prancing horse, throwing up his heavy sword and catching it, and
singing of the bravery of his countrymen. An English Knight, who rode
out from the English force to meet him, fell by this Knight’s hand.
Another English Knight rode out, and he fell too. But then a third rode
out, and killed the Norman. This was in the first beginning of the
fight. It soon raged everywhere.
The English, keeping side by side in a great mass, cared no more for
the showers of Norman arrows than if they had been showers of Norman
rain. When the Norman horsemen rode against them, with their
battle-axes they cut men and horses down. The Normans gave way. The
English pressed forward. A cry went forth among the Norman troops that
Duke William was killed. Duke William took off his helmet, in order
that his face might be distinctly seen, and rode along the line before
his men. This gave them courage. As they turned again to face the
English, some of their Norman horse divided the pursuing body of the
English from the rest, and thus all that foremost portion of the
English army fell, fighting bravely. The main body still remaining
firm, heedless of the Norman arrows, and with their battle-axes cutting
down the crowds of horsemen when they rode up, like forests of young
trees,—Duke William pretended to retreat. The eager English followed.
The Norman army closed again, and fell upon them with great slaughter.
‘Still,’ said Duke William, ‘there are thousands of the English, firm
as rocks around their King. Shoot upward, Norman archers, that your
arrows may fall down upon their faces!’
The sun rose high, and sank, and the battle still raged. Through all
the wild October day, the clash and din resounded in the air. In the
red sunset, and in the white moonlight, heaps upon heaps of dead men
lay strewn, a dreadful spectacle, all over the ground.
King Harold, wounded with an arrow in the eye, was nearly blind. His
brothers were already killed. Twenty Norman Knights, whose battered
armour had flashed fiery and golden in the sunshine all day long, and
now looked silvery in the moonlight, dashed forward to seize the Royal
banner from the English Knights and soldiers, still faithfully
collected round their blinded King. The King received a mortal wound,
and dropped. The English broke and fled. The Normans rallied, and the
day was lost.
O what a sight beneath the moon and stars, when lights were shining in
the tent of the victorious Duke William, which was pitched near the
spot where Harold fell—and he and his knights were carousing,
within—and soldiers with torches, going slowly to and fro, without,
sought for the corpse of Harold among piles of dead—and the Warrior,
worked in golden thread and precious stones, lay low, all torn and
soiled with blood—and the three Norman Lions kept watch over the field!