On the fourteenth of October, 1066, the day of St. Calixtus, the
Norman force was drawn out in battle array. Mass had been said; Odo
and the Bishop of Coutance had blessed the troops; and received their
vow never more to eat flesh on the anniversary of that day. And Odo
had mounted his snow-white charger, and already drawn up the cavalry
against the coming of his brother the Duke. The army was marshalled
in three great divisions.
Roger de Montgommeri and William Fitzosborne led the first; and with
them were the forces from Picardy and the countship of Boulogne, and
the fiery Franks; Geoffric Martel and the German Hugues (a prince of
fame); Aimeri, Lord of Thouars, and the sons of Alain Fergant, Duke of
Bretagne, led the second, which comprised the main bulk of the allies
from Bretagne, and Maine, and Poitou. But both these divisions were
intermixed with Normans, under their own special Norman chiefs.
The third section embraced the flower of martial Europe, the most
renowned of the Norman race; whether those knights bore the French
titles into which their ancestral Scandinavian names had been
transformed--Sires of Beaufou and Harcourt, Abbeville, and de Molun,
Montfichet, Grantmesnil, Lacie, D'Aincourt, and D'Asnieres;--or
whether, still preserving, amidst their daintier titles, the old names
that had scattered dismay through the seas of the Baltic; Osborne and
Tonstain, Mallet and Bulver, Brand and Bruse [262]. And over this
division presided Duke William. Here was the main body of the
matchless cavalry, to which, however, orders were given to support
either of the other sections, as need might demand. And with this
body were also the reserve. For it is curious to notice, that
William's strategy resembled in much that of the last great Invader of
Nations--relying first upon the effect of the charge; secondly, upon a
vast reserve brought to bear at the exact moment on the weakest point
of the foe.
All the horsemen were in complete link or net mail [263], armed with
spears and strong swords, and long, pear-shaped shields, with the
device either of a cross or a dragon [264]. The archers, on whom
William greatly relied, were numerous in all three of the corps [265],
were armed more lightly--helms on their heads, but with leather or
quilted breastplates, and "panels," or gaiters, for the lower limbs.
But before the chiefs and captains rode to their several posts they
assembled round William, whom Fitzosborne had called betimes, and who
had not yet endued his heavy mail, that all men might see suspended
from his throat certain relics chosen out of those on which Harold had
pledged his fatal oath. Standing on an eminence in front of all his
lines, the consecrated banner behind him, and Bayard, his Spanish
destrier, held by his squires at his side, the Duke conversed cheerily
with his barons, often pointing to the relics. Then, in sight of all,
he put on his mail, and, by the haste of his squires, the back-piece
was presented to him first. The superstitious Normans recoiled as at
an evil omen.
"Tut!" said the ready chief; "not in omens and divinations, but in
God, trust I! Yet, good omen indeed is this, and one that may give
heart to the most doubtful; for it betokens that the last shall be
first--the dukedom a kingdom--the count a king! Ho there, Rou de
Terni, as Hereditary Standard-bearer take thy right, and hold fast to
yon holy gonfanon."
"Grant merci," said De Terni, "not to-day shall a standard be borne by
me, for I shall have need of my right arm for my sword, and my left
for my charger's rein and my trusty shield."
"Thou sayest right, and we can ill spare such a warrior. Gautier
Giffart, Sire de Longueville, to thee is the gonfanon."
"Beau Sire," answered Gautier; "par Dex, Merci. But my head is grey
and my arm weak; and the little strength left me I would spend in
smiting the English at the head of my men."
"Per la resplendar De," cried William, frowning;--"do ye think, my
proud vavasours, to fail me in this great need?"
"Nay," said Gautier; "but I have a great host of chevaliers and paid
soldiers, and without the old man at their head will they fight as
well?"
"Then, approach thou, Tonstain le Blanc, son of Rou," said William;
"and be thine the charge of a standard that shall wave ere nightfall
over the brows of thy--King!" A young knight, tall and strong as his
Danish ancestor, stept forth, and laid gripe on the banner.
Then William, now completely armed, save his helmet, sprang at one
bound on his steed. A shout of admiration rang from the Quens and
knights.
"Saw ye ever such beau rei?" [266] said the Vicomte de Thouars.
The shout was caught by the lines, and echoed afar, wide, and deep
through the armament, as in all his singular majesty of brow and mien,
William rode forth: lifting his hand, the shout hushed, and thus he
spoke "loud as a trumpet with a silver sound."
"Normans and soldiers, long renowned in the lips of men, and now
hallowed by the blessing of the Church!--I have not brought you over
the wide seas for my cause alone; what I gain, ye gain. If I take the
land, you will share it. Fight your best, and spare not; no retreat,
and no quarter! I am not come here for my cause alone, but to avenge
our whole nation for the felonies of yonder English. They butchered
our kinsmen the Danes, on the night of St. Brice; they murdered
Alfred, the brother of their last King, and decimated the Normans who
were with him. Yonder they stand,--malefactors that await their doom!
and ye the doomsmen! Never, even in a good cause, were yon English
illustrious for warlike temper and martial glory [267]. Remember how
easily the Danes subdued them! Are ye less than Danes, or I than
Canute? By victory ye obtain vengeance, glory, honours, lands,
spoil,--aye, spoil beyond your wildest dreams. By defeat,--yea, even
but by loss of ground, ye are given up to the sword! Escape there is
not, for the ships are useless. Before you the foe, behind you the
ocean. Normans, remember the feats of your countrymen in Sicily!
Behold a Sicily more rich! Lordships and lands to the living,--glory
and salvation to those who die under the gonfanon of the Church! On,
to the cry of the Norman warrior; the cry before which have fled so
often the prowest Paladins of Burgundy and France--'Notre Dame et Dex
aide!'" [268]
Meanwhile, no less vigilant, and in his own strategy no less skilful,
Harold had marshalled his men. He formed two divisions; those in
front of the entrenchments; those within it. At the first, the men of
Kent, as from time immemorial, claimed the honour of the van, under
"the Pale Charger,"--famous banner of Hengist. This force was drawn
up in the form of the Anglo-Danish wedge; the foremost lines in the
triangle all in heavy mail, armed with their great axes, and covered
by their immense shields. Behind these lines, in the interior of the
wedge, were the archers, protected by the front rows of the heavy
armed; while the few horsemen--few indeed compared with the Norman
cavalry--were artfully disposed where they could best harass and
distract the formidable chivalry with which they were instructed to
skirmish, and not peril actual encounter. Other bodies of the light
armed; slingers, javelin throwers, and archers, were planted in spots
carefully selected, according as they were protected by trees,
bushwood, and dykes. The Northumbrians (that is, all the warlike
population, north the Humber, including Yorkshire, Westmoreland,
Cumberland, etc.), were, for their present shame and future ruin,
absent from that field, save, indeed, a few who had joined Harold in
his march to London. But there were the mixed races of Hertfordshire
and Essex, with the pure Saxons of Sussex and Surrey, and a large body
of the sturdy Anglo-Danes from Lincolnshire, Ely and Norfolk. Men,
too, there were, half of old British blood, from Dorset, Somerset, and
Gloucester. And all were marshalled according to those touching and
pathetic tactics which speak of a nation more accustomed to defend
than to aggrieve. To that field the head of each family led his sons
and kinsfolk; every ten families (or tything) were united under their
own chosen captain. Every ten of these tythings had, again, some
loftier chief, dear to the populace in peace; and so on the holy
circle spread from household, hamlet, town,--till, all combined, as
one county under one Earl, the warriors fought under the eyes of their
own kinsfolk, friends, neighbours, chosen chiefs! What wonder that
they were brave?
The second division comprised Harold's house-carles, or bodyguard,--
the veterans especially attached to his family,--the companions of his
successful wars,--a select band of the martial East-Anglians,--the
soldiers supplied by London and Middlesex, and who, both in arms,
discipline, martial temper and athletic habits, ranked high among the
most stalwart of the troops, mixed, as their descent was, from the
warlike Dane and the sturdy Saxon. In this division, too, was
comprised the reserve. And it was all encompassed by the palisades
and breastworks, to which were but three sorties, whence the defenders
might sally, or through which at need the vanguard might secure a
retreat. All the heavy armed had mail and shields similar to the
Normans, though somewhat less heavy; the light armed had, some tunics
of quilted linen, some of hide; helmets of the last material, spears,
javelins, swords, and clubs. But the main arm of the host was in the
great shield, and the great axe wielded by men larger in stature and
stronger of muscle than the majority of the Normans, whose physical
race had deteriorated partly by inter-marriage with the more delicate
Frank, partly by the haughty disdain of foot exercise.
Mounting a swift and light steed, intended not for encounter (for it
was the custom of English kings to fight on foot, in token that where
they fought there was no retreat), but to bear the rider rapidly from
line to line [269], King Harold rode to the front of the vanguard;--
his brothers by his side. His head, like his great foe's, was bare,
nor could there be a more striking contrast than that of the broad
unwrinkled brow of the Saxon, with his fair locks, the sign of royalty
and freedom, parted and falling over the collar of mail, the clear and
steadfast eye of blue, the cheek somewhat hollowed by kingly cares,
but flushed now with manly pride--the form stalwart and erect, but
spare in its graceful symmetry, and void of all that theatric pomp of
bearing which was assumed by William--no greater contrast could there
be than that which the simple earnest Hero-king presented, to the brow
furrowed with harsh ire and politic wile, the shaven hair of monastic
affectation, the dark, sparkling tiger eye, and the vast proportions
that awed the gaze in the port and form of the imperious Norman. Deep
and loud and hearty as the shout with which his armaments had welcomed
William, was that which now greeted the King of the English host: and
clear and full, and practised in the storm of popular assemblies, went
his voice down the listening lines.
"This day, O friends and Englishmen, sons of our common land--this day
ye fight for liberty. The Count of the Normans hath, I know, a mighty
army; I disguise not its strength. That army he hath collected
together, by promising to each man a share in the spoils of England.
Already, in his court and his camp, he hath parcelled out the lands of
this kingdom; and fierce are the robbers who fight for the hope of
plunder! But he cannot offer to his greatest chief boons nobler than
those I offer to my meanest freeman--liberty, and right, and law, in
the soil of his fathers! Ye have heard of the miseries endured in the
old time under the Dane, but they were slight indeed to those which ye
may expect from the Norman. The Dane was kindred to us in language
and in law, and who now can tell Saxon from Dane? But yon men would
rule ye in a language ye know not, by a law that claims the crown as
the right of the sword, and divides the land among the hirelings of an
army. We baptized the Dane, and the Church tamed his fierce soul into
peace; but yon men make the Church itself their ally, and march to
carnage under the banner profaned to the foulest of human wrongs!
Outscourings of all nations, they come against you: Ye fight as
brothers under the eyes of your fathers and chosen chiefs; ye fight
for the women ye would save from the ravisher; ye fight for the
children ye would guard from eternal bondage; ye fight for the altars
which yon banner now darkens! Foreign priest is a tyrant as ruthless
and stern as ye shall find foreign baron and king! Let no man dream
of retreat; every inch of ground that ye yield is the soil of your
native land. For me, on this field I peril all. Think that mine eye
is upon you wherever ye are. If a line waver or shrink, ye shall hear
in the midst the voice of your King. Hold fast to your ranks,
remember, such amongst you as fought with me against Hardrada,--
remember that it was not till the Norsemen lost, by rash sallies,
their serried array, that our arms prevailed against them. Be warned
by their fatal error, break not the form of the battle; and I tell you
on the faith of a soldier who never yet hath left field without
victory,--that ye cannot be beaten. While I speak, the winds swell
the sails of the Norse ships, bearing home the corpse of Hardrada.
Accomplish this day the last triumph of England; add to these hills a
new mount of the conquered dead! And when, in far times and strange
lands, scald and scop shall praise the brave man for some valiant deed
wrought in some holy cause, they shall say, 'He was brave as those who
fought by the side of Harold, and swept from the sward of England the
hosts of the haughty Norman.'"
Scarcely had the rapturous hurrahs of the Saxons closed on this
speech, when full in sight, north-west of Hastings, came the first
division of the Invader.
Harold remained gazing at them, and not seeing the other sections in
movement, said to Gurth, "If these are all that they venture out, the
day is ours."
"Look yonder!" said the sombre Haco, and he pointed to the long array
that now gleamed from the wood through which the Saxon kinsmen had
passed the night before; and scarcely were these cohorts in view, than
lo! from a third quarter advanced the glittering knighthood under the
Duke. All three divisions came on in simultaneous assault, two on
either wing of the Saxon vanguard, the third (the Norman) towards the
entrenchments.
In the midst of the Duke's cohort was the sacred gonfanon, and in
front of it and of the whole line, rode a strange warrior of gigantic
height. And as he rode, the warrior sang:
"Chaunting loud the lusty strain
Of Roland and of Charlemain,
And the dead, who, deathless all,
Fell at famous Roncesval." [270]
And the knights, no longer singing hymn and litany, swelled, hoarse
through their helmets, the martial chorus. This warrior, in front of
the Duke and the horsemen, seemed beside himself with the joy of
battle. As he rode, and as he chaunted, he threw up his sword in the
air like a gleeman, catching it nimbly as it fell [271], and
flourishing it wildly, till, as if unable to restrain his fierce
exhilaration, he fairly put spurs to his horse, and, dashing forward
to the very front of a detachment of Saxon riders, shouted:
"A Taillefer! a Taillefer!" and by voice and gesture challenged forth
some one to single combat.
A fiery young thegn who knew the Romance tongue, started forth and
crossed swords with the poet; but by what seemed rather a juggler's
sleight of hand than a knight's fair fence, Taillefer, again throwing
up and catching his sword with incredible rapidity, shore the unhappy
Saxon from the helm to the chine, and riding over his corpse, shouting
and laughing, he again renewed his challenge. A second rode forth and
shared the same fate. The rest of the English horsemen stared at each
other aghast; the shouting, singing, juggling giant seemed to them not
knight, but demon; and that single incident, preliminary to all other
battle, in sight of the whole field, might have sufficed to damp the
ardour of the English, had not Leofwine, who had been despatched by
the King with a message to the entrenchments, come in front of the
detachment; and, his gay spirit roused and stung by the insolence of
the Norman, and the evident dismay of the Saxon riders, without
thought of his graver duties, he spurred his light half-mailed steed
to the Norman giant; and, not even drawing his sword, but with his
spear raised over his head, and his form covered by his shield, he
cried in Romance tongue, "Go and chaunt to the foul fiend, O croaking
minstrel!" Taillefer rushed forward, his sword shivered on the Saxon
shield, and in the same moment he fell a corpse under the hoofs of his
steed, transfixed by the Saxon spear.
A cry of woe, in which even William (who, proud of his poet's
achievements, had pressed to the foremost line to see this new
encounter) joined his deep voice, wailed through the Norman ranks;
while Leofwine rode deliberately towards them, halted a moment, and
then flung his spear in the midst with so deadly an aim, that a young
knight, within two of William, reeled on his saddle, groaned, and
fell.
"How like ye, O Normans, the Saxon gleeman?" said Leofwine, as he
turned slowly, regained the detachment, and bade them heed carefully
the orders they had received, viz., to avoid the direct charge of the
Norman horse, but to take every occasion to harass and divert the
stragglers; and then blithely singing a Saxon stave, as if inspired by
Norman minstrelsy, he rode into the entrenchments.