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.
The English had thus far stood their ground well and wisely. The
tactics of Harold had thus far completely answered. Not only had
every attack failed, but the great [Sidenote: Flight of the Bretons
on the left; the light-armed English pursue.] mass of the French army
altogether lost heart. The Bretons and the other auxiliaries on the
left were the first to give way. Horse and foot alike, they turned and
fled. A body of English troops was now rash enough, in direct defiance
of the King’s orders, to leave its post and pursue. These were of
course some of the defenders of the English right. They may have been,
as is perhaps suggested by a later turn of the battle, the detachment
which guarded the small outlying hill. Or they may have been the men
posted at the point just behind the outlying hill, where the slope is
easiest, and where the main Breton attack would most likely be made.
They had succeeded in beating back their assailants, and the temptation
to chase the flying enemy must have been almost irresistible. And
it may even be that old differences of race added keenness to the
encounter, and that Englishmen felt a special delight in cutting down
_Bret-wealas_ even from [Sidenote: Panic of all William’s army.]
beyond sea. At any rate, the whole of William’s left wing was thrown
into utter confusion. The central division could hardly have seen the
cause of that confusion; the press of the fugitives disordered their
ranks, and soon the whole of the assailing host was falling back; even
the Normans themselves, as their historian is driven unwillingly to
confess, were at last carried away by the contagion.[1379] For the
moment the day seemed lost; men might well deem that the Bastard had
no hope of being changed into the Conqueror, the Duke of the Normans
[Sidenote: William and Odo recall the fugitives.] into the King of the
English. But the strong heart of William failed him not, and by his
single prowess and presence of mind he recalled his flying troops.
Like Brihtnoth at Maldon,[1380] like Eadmund at Sherstone,[1381] he
was himself deemed to have fallen or to have fled.[1382] He tore his
helmet from his head,[1383] and with his look and his voice[1384] he
called back his men to the attack. “Madmen,” he cried, “behold me. Why
flee ye? Death is behind you, victory is before you. I live, and by
God’s grace I will conquer.”[1385] With a spear, snatched, it may be,
from some comrade, he met or pursued the fugitives, driving them back
by main force to the work.[1386] Yet one version tells us that at this
very moment a counsellor of flight was at his side. One Norman poet
has sung how Eustace of Boulogne bade William turn his rein, and not
rush on upon certain death.[1387] If such counsels were ever given,
they were cast aside with scorn; the bold words and gestures of the
Duke restored the spirits of his men, and his knights once more pressed
on, sword in hand,[1388] round him. His brother the Bishop meanwhile
rode, mace in hand, to another quarter, and called back to their duty
another party of fugitives.[1389] [Sidenote: The Bretons turn on their
pursuers.] Encouraged by this turn in the fight, the Breton infantry
themselves, chased as they were across the field by the over-daring
English, now turned and cut their pursuers in pieces.[1390] Order was
soon again established throughout the whole line of the assailants, and
William and Odo, with all their host, pressed on to a second and more
terrible attack.
[Sidenote: Second great attack; personal exploits of William.]
A new act in the awful drama of that day has now begun. The Duke
himself, at the head of his own Normans, again pressed towards
the Standard. Now came what was perhaps the fiercest exchange of
handstrokes in the whole battle. As in the old Roman legend,[1391] the
main stress of the fight fell on three valiant brethren on either side.
William, Odo, and Robert pressed on to the attack, while Harold, Gyrth,
and Leofwine stood ready to [Sidenote: William seeks out Harold;]
defend. The Duke himself, his relics round his neck, spurred on right
in the teeth of the English King. A few moments more, and the mighty
rivals might have met face to face, and the war-club of the Bastard
might have clashed against the lifted axe of the Emperor of Britain.
That Harold shrank from such an encounter we [Sidenote: but is unhorsed
by the spear of Gyrth.] may not deem for a moment. But a heart, if it
might be, even loftier than his own beat high to save him from such
a risk. In the same heroic spirit in which he had already offered to
lead the host on what seemed a desperate enterprise,[1392] the Earl
of the East-Angles pressed forward to give, if need be, his own life
for his King and brother. Before William could come to handstrokes
with Harold, perhaps before he could even reach the barricade, a
spear, hurled by the hand of Gyrth, checked his progress. The weapon
so far missed its aim that the Duke was himself unhurt. But his noble
Spanish horse, the first of three that died under him that day, fell
to the ground.[1393] But Duke William could fight on foot as well as
on horseback.[1394] Indeed on foot he had a certain advantage. He
could press closer to the barricade, and could deal a nearer and surer
[Sidenote: Hand to hand fight at the barricades; William kills Gyrth
with his own hand.] blow. And a near and sure blow he did deal. William
rose to his feet; he pressed straight to seek the man who had so nearly
slain him. Duke and Earl met face to face, and the English hero fell
crushed beneath the stroke of the Duke’s mace.[1395] The day might seem
to be turning against England, when a son of Godwine had fallen; nor
did the blow come singly. Gyrth had fallen by a fate worthy of such a
spirit, a fate than which none could be more glorious; he had died in
the noblest of causes and by the hand of the mightiest of enemies. Nor
did he fall alone; close at his side, and almost at the same moment,
[Sidenote: Death of Leofwine.] Leofwine, fighting sword in hand, was
smitten to the earth by an unnamed assailant, perhaps by the mace of
the Prelate of Bayeux or by the lance of the Count of Mortain.[1396]
A dark cloud indeed seemed to have gathered over the destinies of the
great West-Saxon house. Of the valiant band of sons who had surrounded
Godwine on the great day of his return, Harold now stood alone. By a
fate of special bitterness, he had seen with his own eyes the fall of
those nearest and dearest to him. The deed of Metaurus had been, as it
were, wrought beneath the eyes of Hannibal;[1397] Achilleus had looked
on and seen the doom of his Patroklos and his Antilochos. The fate of
England now rested on the single heart and the single arm of her King.
But the fortune of the day was still far from being determined. The
two Earls had fallen, but the fight at the barricades went on as
fiercely as before. The men of the Earldoms of the two fallen chiefs
relaxed not because of the loss of their captains. The warriors of Kent
and Essex [Sidenote: William takes a horse from a knight of Maine.]
fought manfully to avenge their leader.[1398] As for the Duke, we
left him on foot, an enemy as dangerous on foot as when mounted on
his destrier. But Norman and horse could not long be severed. William
called to a knight of Maine to give up his charger to his sovereign.
Was it cowardice, was it disloyalty to the usurper of the rights of
the old Cenomannian house, which made the knight of Maine refuse to
dismount at William’s bidding?[1399] But a blow from the Duke’s hand
brought the disobedient rider to the ground,[1400] and William, again
mounted, was soon again dealing wounds and death among the defenders of
England.[1401] But the deed and the fate of Gyrth were soon repeated.
The spear of another Englishman brought William’s second horse to the
ground, and he too, like the East-Anglian Earl, paid the penalty of
his exploit by death at the Duke’s own hand.[1402] Count Eustace had
by this time better learned how to win the favour of his great ally.
His horse was freely offered to the Duke; a knight of his own following
did him the same good service, and Duke and Count pressed vigorously
on against the English lines.[1403] The struggle was hard; but the
advantage [Sidenote: Partial success of the Frenchmen on the right;]
still remained with the English. The second attack had indeed to some
extent prevailed. Not only had the English suffered a personal loss
than which one loss only could have been greater, but the barricade
was now in some places broken down.[1404] The French on the right
had been specially active and successful in this work. And specially
distinguished among them was a party under the command of a youthful
Norman warrior, Robert the son of the old Roger of Beaumont.[1405]
They had perhaps met with a less vigorous resistance, while the main
hopes and fears of every Englishman must have gathered round the great
personal struggle which was going on beneath the Standard. Still those
who were most successful had as yet triumphed only over timber, and
not over men. The shield-wall still stood behind the palisade, and
every Frenchman who had pressed within the English enclosure had paid
[Sidenote: but the general attack repulsed.] for his daring with his
life.[1406] The English lines were as unyielding as ever; and though
the second attack had been less completely unsuccessful than the first,
it was still plain that to scale the hill by any direct attack of the
Norman horsemen was a hopeless undertaking.
[Sidenote: William’s stratagem of the feigned flight.]
But the generalship of William, his ready eye, his quick thought, his
dauntless courage, never failed him. In the Norman character the fox
and the lion were mingled in nearly equal proportions;[1407] strength
and daring had failed, but the object might perhaps still be gained by
stratagem.[1408] William had marked with pleasure that the late flight
of his troops had beguiled a portion of the English to forsake their
firm array and their strong position.[1409] He had marked with equal
pleasure that some impression had at last been made on the English
defences. If by any means any large portion of the English army could
be drawn down from the heights, an entrance might be made at the points
where the barricade was already weakened. He therefore ventured on a
daring stratagem. If his army, or a portion of it, pretended flight,
the English would be tempted to pursue; the pretended fugitives
would turn upon their pursuers, and meanwhile another division might
reach the summit through the gap thus left open. He gave his orders
accordingly, and they were faithfully and skilfully obeyed. A portion
of the army, seemingly the left wing[1410] which had so lately fled
in earnest, now again [Sidenote: The English on the right come down
and pursue.] turned in apparent flight.[1411] Undismayed by the fate
of their comrades who had before broken their lines, the English on
the right wing, mainly, as we have seen, the irregular levies, rushed
down and pursued them with shouts of delight.[1412] But the men of
Britanny, Poitou, and Maine [Sidenote: The Bretons turn.] had now
better learned their lesson. They turned on the pursuing English; the
parts of the combatants were at once reversed, and the pursuers now
themselves fled in earnest.[1413] Yet, undisciplined and foolhardy as
their conduct had been, they must have had some wary leaders among
them, for they found the means to take a special revenge for the fraud
which had been played off upon them. [Sidenote: Stand of the English at
the detached hill.] The importance of the small outlying hill now came
into full play. Either its defenders had never left it, or a party of
the fugitives contrived to rally and occupy it. At all events it was
occupied and gallantly defended by a body of light-armed English.[1414]
With a shower of darts and stones they overwhelmed a body of French
who attacked [Sidenote: Great slaughter of the French in the western
ravine.] them; not a man of the party was left. Another party of
English, evidently consisting of the levies of the neighbourhood, had
the skill to use their knowledge of the country to the best advantage.
They made their way to the difficult ground to the west of the hill,
to the steep and thickly-wooded banks of the small ravine. Here the
light-armed English turned and made a stand; the French horsemen,
recklessly pursuing, came tumbling head over heels into the chasm,
where they were slaughtered in such numbers that the ground is said to
have been made level by their corpses.[1415]
[Sidenote: Fatal error of the pursuit.]
The men who had committed the great error of pursuing the apparent
fugitives had thus, as far as they themselves were concerned, retrieved
their error skilfully and manfully. But the error was none the less
fatal to England. The Duke’s great object was now gained; the main end
of Harold’s skilful tactics had been frustrated by the inconsiderate
ardour of the least valuable portion of his troops. Through the rash
descent of the light-armed on the right, the whole English army lost
its vantage-ground. The pursuing English had left the most easily
accessible portion of the hill open to the approach of the enemy.[1416]
While French and English were scattered over the lower ground, fighting
in no certain order and with varied [Sidenote: The Normans ride up
the hill to the west. 3 P.M.?] success, the main body of the Normans
made their way on to the hill, no doubt by the gentle slope at the
point west of the present buildings.[1417] The great advantage of the
ground was now lost; the Normans were at last on the hill. Instead of
having to cut their way up the slope and through the palisades, they
could now charge to the east, with a slight inclination of the ground
in their favour, directly against the defenders of the Standard. Still
the [Sidenote: The battle now on the hill.] battle was far from being
over. The site had still some advantages for the English. The hill,
narrow and in some places with steep sides, was by no means suited for
the evolutions of cavalry, and, though the English palisade was gone,
the English shield-wall was still a formidable hindrance in the way of
the assailants. In short the position which the keen eye of Harold had
chosen stood him in good stead to the last. Our Norman informants still
speak with admiration of the firm stand made by the [Sidenote: Close
combat of the Normans against the English shield-wall.] English. It was
still the hardest of tasks to surround their bristling lines. It was a
strange warfare, where the one side dealt in assaults and movements,
while the other, as if fixed in the ground, withstood them. The array
of the English was so close that they moved only when they were dead,
they stirred not at all while they were alive. The slightly wounded
could not escape, but were crushed to death by the thick ranks of
their comrades.[1418] That is to say, the array of the shield-wall was
still kept, though now without the help of the barricades or the full
advantage of the ground. The day had now turned decidedly in favour of
the invaders; but the fight was still far from being over. It was by no
means clear that some new chance of warfare might not again turn the
balance in favour of England.[1419]
[Sidenote: The English array relaxed.]
It is hard to tell the exact point of time at which the Normans
gained this great advantage. But it was probably about three in the
afternoon, the hour of vespers.[1420] If so, the fight had already been
raging for six hours, and as yet its result was far from certain. But
the last stage of the battle was now drawing near. The English, though
no longer entrenched, had still the fortress of shields to trust to,
but gradually the line became less firmly kept, and the battle seems
almost to have changed [Sidenote: Personal exploits.] into a series
of single combats. It is probably at this stage that we should place
most of the many personal exploits recorded of various warriors on
both sides.[1421] The names of the Normans are preserved, while the
English, though full justice is done to their valour, remain nameless.
[Sidenote: Valour and conduct of Harold.] Of Harold himself, strange to
say, we hear nothing personally, beyond the highest general eulogies
of his courage and conduct. His axe was the weightiest; his blows were
the most terrible of all. The horse and his rider gave way before him,
cloven to the ground by a single stroke.[1422] He played the part
alike of a general and of a private soldier. This is a praise which
must have been common to every commander of those times; still it is
given in a marked way both to William and to Harold.[1423] [Sidenote:
Personal exploits of William;] But the two rivals never actually met.
William, we are told, sought earnestly to meet his enemy face to face,
but he never succeeded.[1424] He found however adversaries hardly less
terrible. Like Gyrth earlier in the fight, another Englishman, whose
axe had been dealing death around him, now met the Duke in single
combat. William spurred on his horse, and aimed a blow at him with
his mace; the Englishman swerved, he avoided the stroke, and lifted
his own axe against William. The Duke bent himself; the axe fell, it
beat in his helmet and nearly struck him from his horse. But William
kept his seat; he aimed another blow at the Englishman, who now took
shelter among his comrades. A party of the Normans pressed on, singled
him out, and pierced him through and through with their lances.[1425]
Another Englishman smote at the Duke with his spear, but William was
beforehand with him; before the blow could be dealt, a stroke of the
war-club had smitten him to the ground.[1426] Personal encounters of
this sort were going on all over the hill. One gigantic Englishman,
captain, we are told, of a hundred men,[1427] did special execution
among the enemy. Beneath his blows, as beneath those of the King, horse
and rider fell to the ground; the Normans stood aghast before him, till
a [Sidenote: of Roger of Montgomery.] thrust from the lance of Roger
of Montgomery left him stretched on the earth. Two other Englishmen,
sworn brothers in arms, fought side by side, and many horses and men
had fallen beneath their axes. A French knight met them face to face;
for a moment his heart failed him and he thought of flight; but his
courage returned; he raised his shield to save his head from the axes;
he pierced one Englishman through with his lance; as the Englishman
fell, the lance broke in his body; the Frenchman then seized a mace
which hung at his saddle-bow, and smote down the comrade of the slain
man, crushing head-piece [Sidenote: Death of Robert Fitz-Erneis.] and
head with a single blow.[1428] One gallant Norman, Robert Fitz-Erneis,
a near kinsman of Ralph of Tesson, died in a more daring exploit than
all. He galloped, sword in hand, right towards the Standard itself. He
sought for the honour of beating down the proud ensign beneath which
the King of the English still kept his post. More than one Englishman
died beneath his sword, but he was soon surrounded, and he fell beneath
the axes of their comrades. On the morrow his body was found stretched
in death at the foot of the Standard.[1429]
Other tales of the same sort, characteristic at least, whether verbally
true or not, abound in the pages of the Norman poet. All bear witness
to the enduring valour displayed on both sides, and to the fearful
execution which was [Sidenote: The English resistance slackens.]
wrought by the national English weapon. But at last the effects of
this sort of warfare began to tell on the English ranks. There could
have been no greater trial than thus to bear up, hour after hour, in
a struggle which was purely defensive. The strain, and the consequent
weariness, must have been incomparably greater on their side than on
that of their assailants. It may well have been in sheer relief from
physical exhaustion that we read, now that there was no artificial
defence between them and their enemies, of Englishmen rushing forward
from their ranks, bounding like a stag, and thus finding opportunity
for the personal encounters which I have been describing.[1430]
Gradually, after so many brave warriors had fallen, resistance grew
fainter;[1431] but still even now the fate of the battle seemed
doubtful. Many of the best and bravest of England had died, but not a
man had fled; the Standard still waved as proudly [Sidenote: The battle
undecided while Harold lived.] as ever; the King still fought beneath
it.[1432] While Harold lived, while the horse and his rider still fell
beneath his axe, the heart of England failed not, the hope of England
had not wholly passed away. Around the two-fold ensigns the war was
still fiercely raging, and to that point every eye and every arm in
the Norman host was directed. The battle had raged ever since nine
in the morning, and evening-was now drawing in.[1433] New efforts,
new devices, were needed to overcome the resistance of the English,
diminished as were their numbers, and wearied as they were [Sidenote:
The archers shoot in the air.] with the livelong toil of that awful
day. The Duke ordered his archers to shoot up in the air, that their
arrows might, as it were, fall straight from heaven.[1434] The effect
was immediate and fearful. No other device of the wily Duke that day
did such frightful execution. Helmets were pierced; eyes were put out;
men strove to guard their heads with their shields,[1435] and, in so
doing, they were of course less able to wield their axes. And now the
supreme moment drew near. There was one point of the hill at which the
Norman bowmen were bidden specially to aim with their truest skill. As
twilight was coming on, a mighty shower of arrows[1436] was launched on
its deadly errand against the defenders of the Standard. There Harold
still fought;[1437] his shield bristled with Norman shafts; but he
was still unwounded and unwearied. At last another arrow, more charged
with destiny than its fellows, went still [Sidenote: Harold wounded
in the eye and disabled. 6 P.M.] more truly to its mark. Falling like
a bolt from heaven, it pierced the King’s right eye; he clutched
convulsively at the weapon, he broke off the shaft, his axe dropped
from his hand, and he sank in agony at the foot of the Standard.[1438]
The King was thus disabled, and the fate [Sidenote: Fight round the
Standard.] of the day was no longer doubtful. Twenty knights now bound
themselves to lower or to bear off the ensigns which still rose as
proudly as ever while Harold lay dying beneath them. But his comrades
still fought; most of the twenty paid for their venture with their
lives, but [Sidenote: The Dragon borne off and the Standard beaten
down.] the survivors succeeded in their attempt. Harold’s own Standard
of the Fighting Man was beaten to the earth; the golden Dragon, the
ensign of Cuthred and Ælfred, was carried off in triumph.[1439] But
Harold, though disabled, still breathed; four knights rushed upon
him and [Sidenote: Harold despatched by Eustace and three others.]
despatched him with various wounds.[1440] The Latin poet of the battle
describes this inglorious exploit with great glee. One of the four was
Eustace; in such a cowardly deed of butchery he might deem that he was
repeating his old exploit at Dover. Nor are we amazed to find the son
of Guy of Ponthieu foremost in doing despite to the man who had once
been his father’s prisoner. But one blushes to see men bearing the
lofty names of Giffard and Montfort, names soon to be as familiar to
English as to Norman ears, taking a share in such low-minded vengeance
on a fallen foe.[1441] The deeds of the four are enumerated, but we
know not how to apportion them among the actors. One thrust pierced
through the shield of the dying King and stabbed him in the breast;
another assailant finished the work by striking off his head with his
sword. But even [Sidenote: Insults offered to his dead body.] this
vengeance was not enough. A third pierced the dead body and scattered
about the entrails;[1442] the fourth, coming, it would seem, too late
for any more efficient share in the deed, cut off the King’s leg as
he lay dead.[1443] Such was the measure which the boasted chivalry of
Normandy meted out to a prince who had never dealt harshly or cruelly
by either a domestic or a foreign foe. But we must add, in justice to
the Conqueror, that he pronounced the last and most brutal insult to
be a base and cowardly act, and he expelled the perpetrator from his
army.[1444]
[Sidenote: The Thegns and Housecarls still resist.]
The blow had gone truly to its mark; but still all was not over.
Harold had fallen, as his valiant brothers had fallen before him.
The event too truly showed that England had fallen with the sons of
Godwine; that, as ever in this age, everything turned on the life of
one man, and that the one man who could have guarded and saved England
was taken from her. The men who fought upon the hill of Senlac may
have been too deeply occupied with the duty of the moment to look
forward to the future chances of their country. But they knew at least
that with their King’s death that day’s battle was lost. Yet even
when Harold had fallen, resistance did not at once cease. As long as
there was a ray of light in the heaven, as long as an English arm
had strength to lift axe or javelin, the personal following of King
Harold continued the unequal [Sidenote: Utter slaughter of the King’s
personal following.] strife.[1445] Worn out by the strain of a long
resistance, while the Normans, as assailants, seemed to draw fresh
vigour from the conflict,[1446] they, the highest nobility, the most
valiant soldiery of England, were slaughtered to a man.[1447] Quarter
was neither given nor asked;[1448] not a man of the _comitatus_ fled;
not a man was taken captive. There, around the fallen Standard, we may
call up before our eyes the valiant deaths of those few warriors of
Senlac whose names we know. There fell Thurkill and Godric beside their
friend and former Earl. There Ælfwig died by his royal nephew, leaving
an inheritance of sorrow to the house over which he ruled. And there
the East-Anglian deacon lay in death by the side of the lord whom, from
his early days, he [Sidenote: Leofric and Esegar escape wounded.] had
served so faithfully.[1449] Those alone escaped, who, smitten down by
wounds, were on the morrow thrown aside as dead,[1450] but who still
breathed, and who in time recovered strength to seek their homes and
still to serve their [Sidenote: Leofric dies. November 1.] country.
Abbot Leofric, sick and weary, made his way home to die in his own
Golden Borough;[1451] and Esegar, the valiant Staller, was borne back
to London, his body disabled by honourable wounds, but his heart still
stout and his wit still keen to keep up resistance to the last.[1452]
Few however could those have been who escaped by accidents like
these. As a rule, no man of Harold’s following who marched to Senlac
found his way back from that fatal hill. The nobility, the warlike
flower, of southern and eastern England were utterly cut off. But we
cannot blame men of meaner birth and fame for not showing the same
desperate valour. Night was now [Sidenote: Flight of the light-armed.]
coming on, and, under cover of the darkness,[1453] the light-armed
took to flight.[1454] Some fled on foot, some, like the two traitors
at Maldon,[1455] on the horses which had carried [Sidenote: Pursuit
of the Normans; great slaughter of the pursuers in Malfosse.] the
fallen leaders to the battle.[1456] The Normans pursued, and, as in
an earlier stage of the day, the fleeing English found means to take
their revenge upon their conquerors. On the north side of the hill
the descent is steep, almost precipitous, the ground is irregular and
marshy. No place could be less suited for horsemen, unaccustomed to
the country, to pursue, even by daylight, light-armed foot, to many of
whom every step of ground was familiar. In the darkness or imperfect
light of the evening, their case was still more hopeless than in the
similar case earlier in the day. In the ardour of pursuit horse and
man fell headforemost over the steep, where they were crushed by the
fall, smothered in the morass, or slain outright by the swords and
clubs of the English. [Sidenote: Eustace bids William retreat.] For
the fugitives, seeing the plight of their pursuers, once more turned
and slaughtered them without mercy. Count Eustace, deeming that a new
English force had come to the rescue, turned with fifty knights, and
counselled William to sound a retreat. He whispered in the ear of the
Duke that, if he pressed on, it would be to certain death. The words
were hardly out of his mouth, when a blow, dealt in the darkness,
struck the Count between the shoulder-blades, and he was borne off
with blood flowing from his mouth and nostrils.[1457] But William
pressed on; his good fortune preserved him from the bad luck of his
less fortunate soldiers, and he did not return to [Sidenote: End of the
battle.] the hill till all danger was over. This was the last scene of
the battle, and no scene impressed itself more deeply on the minds of
the descendants of the victors. The name of _Malfosse_, borne for some
ages by the spot where the flying English turned and took their last
revenge, showed how severe was the reverse which the victors there met
with even in the very hour of their triumph.[1458]
[Sidenote: Effect of the death of Harold.]
I have thus described, as well as I could reconcile various and
conflicting narratives, the chief vicissitudes and incidents of this
memorable and hard-fought battle. On its historic importance I need
not dwell; it is the very subject of my history. England was not yet
conquered. The invader, as it was, had hard struggles to go through
before he gained full possession of the length and breadth of the land.
Had Harold lived, had another like Harold been ready to take his place,
we may well doubt whether, even after the overthrow of Senlac, England
would have been conquered at all. As it was, though England was not
yet conquered, yet, from this moment, her complete conquest was only a
matter of time. The Norman had to face much local resistance against
the establishment of his power; he had to quell many local revolts
after the establishment of his power; but he never again met Englishmen
in a pitched battle; he never again had to fight for his Crown against
a rival King at the head of a national army. Such being the case, it is
from the memorable day of Saint Calixtus that we may fairly date the
overthrow, what we know to have been only the imperfect and temporary
overthrow, of our ancient and free Teutonic England. In the eyes of
men of the next generation that day was the fatal day of England, the
day of the sad overthrow of our dear country, the day of her handing
over to foreign lords.[1459] From that day forward the Normans began to
work the will of God upon the folk of England, till there were left in
England no chiefs of the land of English blood, till all were brought
down to bondage and to sorrow, till it was a shame to be called an
Englishman,[1460] and the men of England were no more a people.[1461]
[Sidenote: Military character of the battle.]
Looking also at the fight of Senlac simply as a battle, it is one
of the most memorable in all military history. Two utterly opposite
systems of warfare came into conflict under two commanders, each
worthily matched against the [Sidenote: Skill and valour shown on
both sides.] other both in conduct and in personal prowess. We read
with equal admiration of the consummate skill with which Harold chose
his position and his general scheme of action, and of the wonderful
readiness with which William formed and varied his plans as occasion
served, how he seized on every opportunity, and made even discomfiture
serve his final purpose. And each chief was thoroughly and worthily
served by at least a portion of his army. As a mere question of
soldierly qualities, one hardly knows which side to admire most. Each
nation displayed, in this the first important battle in which they met
as enemies, qualities which to this day remain eminently characteristic
of the two nations respectively. The French—for the praise must not
be confined to the native Normans only—displayed a gallantry at once
impetuous and steady, and a quickness and intelligence in obeying
difficult orders which is above all praise. They came again and again
to the charge, undismayed by repeated reverses, and they knew how to
carry out successfully the elaborate stratagem of the feigned flight.
This last task must have been all the harder, because it seems not to
have been a deliberate scheme planned from the beginning, but to have
been suggested to William’s ready wit by the exigencies of the moment.
Yet almost more admirable, and far more touching, is the long, stubborn
endurance of the English, keeping their post through nine hours of
constant defence, never yielding till death or utter weariness relieved
them from their toil. Had the whole English host been like Harold’s own
following, the defeat of Senlac would undoubtedly have been changed
into a victory. Even writers in the Norman interest allow that so great
was the slaughter, so general at one time was the flight of the Norman
host, that nothing but the visible interposition of God on behalf
of his righteous cause could have given William the victory.[1462]
[Sidenote: The battle lost through the rashness of the light-armed.]
The battle was lost through the error of those light-armed troops,
who, in disobedience to the King’s orders, broke their line to pursue.
Their error was a grievous and a fatal one, but it was the natural
error of high-spirited and untried men, eager for combat and for
distinction, and chafing no doubt at the somewhat irksome restraints
involved in Harold’s plan of defence. And some credit is due to them
and to their immediate leaders for the skill and presence of mind with
which they did their best to retrieve their error. Indeed, as far as
they themselves were concerned, they did retrieve it amply. Never was
a battle more stoutly contested between abler generals supported by
more valiant soldiers. Like the whole English history of this age,
it shows how little the English people had really degenerated in
any essential patriotic or military qualities. But again it shows
how wholly everything depended on the presence of some one competent
man to seize the post of command at the right moment. As long as an
Eadmund or a Harold is forthcoming, defeat may alternate with victory,
but even defeat never is disgrace. How the same people fared under an
incompetent King we have seen throughout the long wretchedness of the
reign of Æthelred. How they fared under selfish and vacillating chiefs
we shall see in the interregnum which followed the death of Harold. But
we must first cast one more look upon Senlac hill, upon the victors and
upon the vanquished. We have to behold William the Conqueror in his
hour of triumph, and we have the hero of England to follow to his grave.
§ 5. _The Burial of Harold. October–December, 1066._
[Sidenote: William returns to the hill. His midnight feast.]
The fight was now over; night had closed in, and those among the
English host who had not fallen around their King had left the field
under cover of the darkness. William now returned to the hill, where
all resistance had long ceased. He looked around, we are told, on the
dead and dying thousands, not without a feeling of pity that so many
men had fallen, even as a sacrifice to his own fancied right.[1463] But
the victory was truly his own; in the old phrase of our Chroniclers,
the Frenchmen had possession of the place of slaughter.[1464] A place
of slaughter indeed it was, where, from morn till twilight, the axe
and javelin of England, the lance and bow of Normandy, had done their
deadly work at the bidding of the two mightiest captains upon earth.
Dead and dying men were heaped around, and nowhere were they heaped
so thickly as around the fallen Standard of England. There, where the
flower of England’s nobility and soldiery lay stretched in death,[1465]
there, where the banner of the Fighting Man now lay beaten to the
ground, the Conqueror knelt, he gave his thanks to God, and bade his
own banner be planted as the sign of the victory which he had won. He
bade the dead be swept aside; the ducal tent was pitched in this, as
it were, the innermost sanctuary of the Conquest, and meat and drink
were brought for his repast in the midst of the ghastly trophies of
his prowess. In vain did Walter Giffard warn him of the rashness of
such an act. Many of the English who lay around were not dead; many
were only slightly wounded; they would rise and escape in the night,
or they would seek to have their revenge, well pleased to sell their
lives at the price of the life of a Norman.[1466] But the strong heart
of William feared not; God had guarded him thus far, and he trusted in
God to guard him still. Then he took off his armour; his shield and
helmet were seen to be dinted with many heavy blows, but the person of
the Conqueror was unhurt.[1467] He was hailed by the loud applause of
his troops, likening him to Roland and Oliver and all the heroes of
old. Again he returned thanks to God, again he thanked his faithful
followers, and sat down to eat and drink among the dead.[1468]
[Sidenote: The burial of the dead. Sunday, October 15.]
The Normans watched upon the hill all night.[1469] On the morrow
of that fearful Sabbath, the morning light of the day of Christian
worship first showed the full horrors of the scene. The first duty
was the burial of the dead. The Duke went over the ground in person,
superintending the funeral rites of the slain of his own army.[1470]
Nor was he, either by temper or by policy, disposed to treat the
vanquished or their kinsfolk with needless cruelty or insult. The women
of the surrounding country came to the camp, praying for the bodies of
their husbands, sons, and brothers, and, by William’s express order,
they were allowed to remove them for burial to the neighbouring towns
and minsters.[1471] The bodies of Ælfwig and his monks were among
[Sidenote: Ælfwig and his monks.] the first to be recognized by the
monastic garb beneath their harness. We hear nothing of the disposal
of their bodies, but we know that their presence in the fight was not
forgotten by the Conqueror.[1472] We hear nothing of the place of
burial of Godric or Thurkill or even of that of Gyrth and Leofwine.
We may suppose that the bodies of the two Earls were borne away to
some church on one of the many estates held by their house within the
South-Saxon land.[1473] [Sidenote: Harold’s body not forthcoming.]
But there was still one corpse which was not forthcoming, one corpse
for which, when found, the stern policy of the victor decreed a
harsher fate. Wives and sisters had borne away the bodies of Thegns
and churls,[1474] but there was neither wife nor sister to claim the
mangled corpse of the Emperor of Britain. One widowed Lady sat in
her palace at Winchester, weeping for the fate of Tostig, perhaps
waiting for the coming of William.[1475] And where was the other, the
daughter of Ælfgar, the wife of Harold, the bride who, as William
deemed, had usurped the place which was designed for his own child?
Are we to deem that she had chosen to cast in her lot rather with her
recreant brothers than with her dauntless husband?[1476] Or was it
rather that she bore within her a future hope of England, one to whom
men might fondly look as an Ætheling born of a crowned King and his
Lady, a son of Harold and Ealdgyth, a grandson alike of Ælfgar and of
Godwine?[1477] All that we know is that, at that moment, the wife of
Harold was far away, perhaps already on her journey, under the care
of Eadwine and Morkere, to seek safety within the distant walls of
Chester.[1478] But there were still those who loved the fallen hero;
there were those who clave to him in life, and who in death would not
forsake him. There was the widowed mother, bereaved of so many valiant
sons; there were the bedesmen who had tasted of his bounty, and the
woman who had loved him with a true, if an unlawful love. It was from
the holy house of Waltham that men [Sidenote: Osgod and Æthelric come
from Waltham.] came to do the last duty to the dead of Senlac. Two of
the Canons of Harold’s minster, Osgod and Æthelric the Childmaster,
had followed the march of the English host. They came, either through
the mere instinct of affection or, as was told in the legends of their
house, made fearful of coming evil through the mysterious warning which
the Holy Hood had given to the King.[1479] They followed their Founder
to the hill of slaughter; but they themselves joined not in the fight;
they stood afar off that they might see the end.[1480] With them,
it may be, had come the now aged Danish princess, Gytha, the widow
of Godwine, the mother of the three heroes who had died [Sidenote:
Gytha asks for Harold’s body.] beneath the fallen Standard. She came
to the Duke and craved the body of her royal son. Three sons of hers
had fallen by his hand or the hand of his followers; let the Conqueror
grant one at least of the three to be honoured with solemn and royal
rites. Harold’s weight in gold should be the price of his burial within
the walls of his own minster.[1481] But in the case of his great rival
the Conqueror was inexorable. His soul was indeed too lofty to be moved
by petty spite towards an enemy who could [Sidenote: William commands
that he shall be buried on the seashore.] no longer harm him. But his
policy bade him to brand the perjurer, the usurper, the excommunicate
of the Church, the despiser of the holy relics, with the solemn
judgement of a minister of righteous vengeance. The proffered bribe had
as little weight with him as it had with the Homeric Achilleus.[1482]
He whose insatiable ambition had caused the slaughter of so many men
should not himself receive the honours of solemn burial. He was not
indeed to be left to dogs and vultures; but he who had guarded the
shore while living should guard it still in death.[1483] A cairn on
the South-Saxon shore, raised high upon the rocks of Hastings, should
be the only memorial of the usurper.[1484] [Sidenote: The body found
by Eadgyth Swanneshals.] But the royal corpse was still unrecognized;
it had been thrown aside among the other bodies which lay around the
Standard, when the ground was cleared for William’s midnight meal.
Who could undertake to find one single body in such an Aceldama? Who
could undertake to recognize a form mangled and mutilated by the base
malignity of unworthy foes? Ealdgyth was far away; Gytha could not be
asked to take upon her such an office. The two faithful priests did
their best, and failed in the attempt.[1485] There was one alone who
could be trusted for the mournful duty; one who knew him, alas, too
well; one who had loved the man and not the King, and whose love, it
may be, had been sacrificed to the duty or the policy of the ruler.
The proud daughter of Ealdormen, the widow of two Kings, had left him
to his fate; it was one of humbler rank, whose love had brought him
not crowns or earldoms, but who had been the well-beloved of his less
exalted days, who was called on to do the last bidding of affection
upon earth. His former mistress, Eadgyth of the Swan’s Neck, was
brought to the spot by Osgod and Æthelric, and was bidden to search for
Harold amid the slain.[1486] Her eye at last recognized the disfigured
corpse, not by its mangled features, but by marks which his faithful
priests, perhaps even his mother, knew not.[1487] The body thus found
awaited the bidding of the Conqueror. [Sidenote: Honours shown to the
body.] William had no mind for simple insult beyond what the stern
bidding of his policy dictated. Christian burial was refused; yet
William could show to the corpse of Harold honours not less marked
than Kleomenês had [Sidenote: It is buried on the shore by William
Malet.] shown to the corpse of Lydiadas.[1488] The mangled limbs were
wrapped in a purple robe, and the body was borne to William’s camp
by the sea-shore.[1489] The charge of this unhallowed yet honourable
burial was entrusted by the Duke to the willing hands of one of his own
chiefs, who was at least not the personal foe of Harold or of England.
By the care of William Malet, a name again to appear in our history,
the body of Harold the son of Godwine was buried beneath a heap of
stones upon the rocks of Sussex.[1490]
[Sidenote: Other accounts.]
Thus far we have the certain guidance of contemporary writers.
Harold died on Senlac and was buried on the heights of Hastings. But
there are two other tales, the evidence for which I shall discuss
elsewhere,[1491] but whose substance I cannot here pass by. One indeed,
with some doubt as to the details, I do not hesitate to accept, as
resting on amply sufficient, though not on strictly contemporary,
evidence. The other is a mere romance, food for the comparative
mythologist rather than for the historian, and valuable only as
illustrating a certain ever-recurring [Sidenote: Legend of Harold’s
escape.] tendency of the human mind. This is the well-known tale,
according to which Harold did not die in the great battle. He escaped,
we are told, and lived for a longer or a shorter time, according to
different accounts, devoting his latter days, according to the most
celebrated version, to a life of penance.[1492] The King, so the story
runs, was found half dead by some of the women who came to tend the
wounded. He was then carried to Winchester by two men of middling rank,
Thegns of the lowest class or churls of the highest.[1493] There he was
nursed for two years, not by his royal sister, but by a Saracen woman
skilled in [Sidenote: His later adventures.] surgery. He then went into
the kindred lands of Saxony and Denmark,[1494] to ask help for England
from her continental brethren. No such help however was forthcoming,
and after a long series of adventures, Harold [Sidenote: His seclusion
and death at Chester.] forsook the world and became a recluse in a cell
attached to Saint John’s minster at Chester, the minster which had once
witnessed the homage done to Eadgar the Peaceful by all the Under-kings
of Britain.[1495] There he died at a great age, having only in his last
moments revealed to those around him that the lowly anchorite was no
other than the native King of conquered England.
[Sidenote: The tale a mere legend; its explanation.]
That this tale is a mere legend I have not the slightest doubt. But
that such a tale should arise is by no means wonderful. It was indeed
almost a matter of course. Whatever might be the feeling among Earls
and Prelates who had other objects, popular English feeling would be
for a while unwilling to believe in the death of the true national
hero. Harold was expected to return, just as Baldwin of Constantinople,
as Sebastian of Portugal, as many other princes in the like case,
were expected to return. The really strange thing is that we do not
hear of any false Harolds, as we hear of false Baldwins and false
Sebastians.[1496] The cause may be that the later hopes of England
gradually drifted away into other directions, towards a restoration
of Eadgar or a deliverance by the arms of Swend. Still, as long as
resistance to the Norman lasted, rumours that Harold lived, that he
would again appear to lead his countrymen, would be rife within the
walls of Exeter and within the Camp of Refuge. But Harold came not.
Where then, if living, did he hide himself? Why did he not join the
patriot bands of Hereward and Waltheof? Why did not the Standard
of the Fighting Man once more float over an English host, and the
Holy Rood of Waltham again resound as the war-cry of a happier field
than Senlac? That Harold lived and yet was not in arms against the
invader, could be explained in one way only. He had betaken himself
to a life of penitence; by prayer and scourge and fasting he was
wiping out the great sin of his life, his fatal oath [Sidenote: The
tale appeals to the feelings of the age] to the Norman. In our eyes
such a self-consecration on Harold’s part would seem a weak forsaking
of an obvious duty. It would not seem so in the eyes of an age which
recognized its highest type of holiness in Eadward. The character of
a patriot King was indeed honourable, but the character of an ascetic
penitent was more honourable [Sidenote: and even to one vein of feeling
at Waltham.] still. The tale would appeal to a certain vein of feeling
in Englishmen generally. It would even appeal to a certain vein of
local piety among Harold’s own bedesmen at Waltham. On the one hand it
upset every local tradition, and deprived Waltham of its most cherished
treasure. But on the other hand, it magnified in a certain way both
the Founder and the foundation, and it went far to raise the church
of Harold to a level with the church of Eadward. It was something to
be founded by the last native King; it was something to be the last
resting-place of his body; but it was something higher still to be
founded by one who was no mere King or lawgiver or conqueror, but whose
deeds of penance had won him a place in the roll of eremites and saints.
[Sidenote: Harold died on Senlac.]
But of all this history knows nothing. In her pages Harold died,
without a shadow of doubt, on the hill of Senlac, on the day of Saint
Calixtus. Florence tells the true tale, in words speaking straight
from the depths of England’s grief—“Heu, ipsemet cecidit crepusculi
tempore.” In that Twilight of the Gods, when right and wrong went forth
to battle, and when wrong for a moment had the victory, the brightest
light of Teutonic England sank, and sank for ever. The son of Godwine
died, as such King and hero should die, helm on head and battle-axe in
hand, striking the last blow for his Crown and people, with the Holy
Rood of Waltham the last cry rising from his lips and ringing in his
ears. Disabled by the Norman arrow, cut down by the Norman sword, he
died beneath the Standard of England, side by side with his brothers
in blood and valour. His lifeless and mangled relics were all that was
left either for the scoffs of enemies or for the reverence of friends.
What the first resting-place of those relics was we have already seen,
but need we hold that the first resting-place of those relics was also
the last?
[Sidenote: His alleged burial at Waltham.]
This brings us to the other story to which I have already alluded,
and which, in its main outline, I am prepared to accept. This is
that the body of Harold, first buried under the cairn by Hastings,
was afterwards translated to his own minster at Waltham. That
Waltham always professed to be the burying-place of Harold—that a
tomb bearing his name was shown there down to the Dissolution of the
Abbey—that fragments of it remained in the middle of the seventeenth
century[1497]—are facts beyond dispute. But these local traditions
would not, under the circumstances, be of themselves enough to lead
us to accept a local claim which at first sight seems to be opposed
to the witness of contemporary writers. But a little examination will
show that the two stories, the story of the cairn-burial and the story
of the burial at Waltham, are not really contradictory. And there is a
mass of evidence of all but the highest kind in support of the claim
of Waltham to have at last sheltered [Sidenote: His body translated
from the shore to Waltham. December, 1066?] the bones of its Founder.
I then accept the view that the body of Harold, like the body of
Waltheof ten years later, was removed from a lowlier resting-place to
a more honourable one, in short from unhallowed to hallowed ground.
Waltheof was first buried on the scene of his martyrdom by Winchester,
and was afterwards removed for more solemn burial in the Abbey of
Crowland.[1498] Such I believe to have been the case with Harold also.
This view reconciles the main facts as stated by all our authorities,
and it falls in with all the circumstances of the case. With our
feelings we might wish that the body of Harold had tarried for ever
under its South-Saxon cairn. In William’s own words, no worthier place
of burial could be his than the shore which he had guarded. But even
modern feelings would be revolted at such a burial of any hero of our
own time. And in those days the religious feeling of Harold’s friends
and bedesmen would never be satisfied till their King and Founder slept
in a spot where all the rites of the Church could be offered around
him by the hands of those who were nourished by his bounty. Nor was
it at all unlikely that William should relent, and should allow such
honours to be paid to the memory of his fallen rival. The first harsh
order exactly fell in with the policy of the first moment of victory.
But, even before the end of the great year, a time came when William
might well be disposed to listen to milder counsels. When the Conqueror
had become the chosen and anointed King of the English, he honestly
strove for a moment to make his rule as acceptable as might be to his
English subjects. In those milder days of his earlier rule, it would
quite fall in with William’s policy to yield to any petition, either
from Gytha or from the brotherhood at Waltham, praying for the removal
of Harold’s body from its unhallowed resting-place. He had then no
motive for harshness. The Crown was safe upon his own head; he was
the acknowledged successor of Eadward, and he could now afford to be
generous to the memory of the intruder of a moment.
[Sidenote: His burial in the minster]
Then it was, as I believe, that the body of Harold was translated from
the cairn on the hill of Hastings [Sidenote: and later translation.]
to a worthier tomb in his own minster at Waltham. There the King
and Founder was buried in the place of honour by the high altar. A
later change in the fabric, probably an enlargement of the choir,
caused a further translation of his body. On that occasion our local
informant, a subject of the Norman Henry, saw and handled [Sidenote:
Destruction of his tomb. c. 1540.] the bones of Harold.[1499] For his
tomb we now seek in vain, as we seek in vain for the tombs of most
of the noblest heroes of our land. The devastation of the sixteenth
century, the brutal indifference of the eighteenth, have swept over
Hyde and Glastonbury and Waltham and Crowland and Evesham, and in their
destroyed or ruined choirs no memory is left of Ælfred and Eadgar
and Harold and Waltheof and Simon of Montfort. But what the men of
his own time could do they did; the simple and pathetic tale of the
local historian shows us how the fallen King was lamented by those
who had known and loved him, and how his memory lived among those who
shared his bounty without having seen his face. Their affection clave
to him in life, their reverence followed him in death; they braved
the wrath of the Conqueror on his behalf; they bore him first to his
humble and unhallowed tomb, and then translated him to a more fitting
resting-place within the walls of the noble fabric which his own bounty
had reared.
ὡς οἵγ’ ἀμφίεπον τάφον Ἕκτορος ἱπποδάμοιο.[1500]
Thus was the last native King of the English borne to his last home in
his own minster. Once only since [Sidenote: The body of Edward the
First at Waltham. 1307.] that day has Waltham seen a royal corpse, but
then it was one which was worthy to rest even by the side of Harold.
Two hundred and forty years after the fight of Senlac, the body of
the great Edward was borne with all royal honours to a temporary
resting-place in the church of Waltham.[1501] Harold was translated to
Waltham from a nameless tomb by the sea-shore; Edward was translated
from Waltham to a still more glorious resting-place beneath the soaring
vault of the apse of Westminster. [Sidenote: Comparison of Harold and
Edward.] But for a while the two heroes lay side by side—the last and
the first of English Kings, between whom none deserved the English name
or could claim honour or gratitude from the English nation. The one was
the last King who reigned purely by the will of the people, without
any claim either of conquest or of hereditary right. The other was
the first King who reigned purely as the son of his father, the first
who succeeded without competitor or interregnum. But each alike, as
none between them did, deserved the love and trust of the people over
whom they reigned. With Harold our native kingship ends; the Dragon of
Wessex gives place to the Leopards of Normandy; the Crown, the laws,
the liberties, the very tongue of Englishmen, seem all fallen never
to rise again. In Edward the line of English Kings begins once more.
After two hundred years of foreign rule, we have again a King bearing
an English name and an English heart—the first to give us back our
ancient laws under new shapes, the first, and for so long the last, to
see that the Empire of his mighty namesake[1502] was a worthier prize
than shadowy dreams of dominion beyond the sea. All between them were
Normans or Angevins, careless of England and her people. Another and a
brighter æra opens, as the lawgiver of England, the conqueror of Wales
and Scotland, seems like an old Bretwalda or West-Saxon Basileus seated
once more upon the throne of Cerdic and of Æthelstan. The conqueror of
Gruffydd might welcome a kindred soul in the conqueror of Llywelyn; the
victor of Stamfordbridge might hail his peer in the victor of Falkirk;
the King with whom England fell might greet his first true successor
in the King with whom she rose again. Such were the men who met in
death within the now vanished choir of Waltham. And in the whole course
of English history we hardly come across a scene which speaks more
deeply to the heart, than when the first founder of our later greatness
was laid by the side of the last kingly champion of our earliest
freedom—when the body of the great Edward was laid, if only for a short
space, by the side of Harold the son of Godwine.