On the morning of the 14th of October the fight began. It lasted
until dark, with heavy loss on both sides. At length William's
strategy carried the day, and Harold and his brave followers found to
their cost that then, as now, it is "the thinking bayonet" which
conquers. The English King was slain and every man of his chosen
troops with him. A monk who wrote the history of the period of the
Conquest, says that "the vices of the Saxons had made them effeminate
and womanish, wherefore it came to pass that, running against Duke
William, they lost themselves and their country with one, and that an
easy and light, battle." Doubtless the English had fallen off in many
ways from what hey had been generations earlier; but the record at
Hastings shows that they had lost neither strength, courage, nor
endurance, and a harder battle ws never fought on British soil.