one by one if indeed they hung back and were close-fisted or afraid.
They commissioned him at last to speak for them at the next hearing,
and when he boldly promised for each man double his regular fee and
allotment—for the lord of twenty knights forty knights, and "for
himself, of his love and zeal, sixty ships armed and equipped and
filled with fighting men," the barons shouted at first "No, no!" and
the hall at Lillebonne echoed with the noise.
But it was all settled finally, and we are told that the duke himself
talked with his barons one by one, and that at last they were as eager
as he. The whole objection seems to have been made for fear that their
doubled and extraordinary tribute should be made a precedent, but the
duke promptly gave his word of honor that it should not be so, and
their estates should not be permanently weighted beyond [Pg285] their
ability. The scribes took down the record of the knights and soldiers
that each baron had promised, and from this time there was a hum and
stir of war-making in Normandy, and that spring there were more women
than men in the fields tending the growing crops.
The duke set himself seriously to work. All the barons of his duchy
and all their men were not enough to depend upon for the overthrowing
of England. William must appeal to his neighbors for help, and in
this he was aided by the Pope's approval, and the blessing that was
promised to those who would punish Harold and his countrymen, traitors
to the Holy Church. The spoils of England were promised to all who
would win a share in them, and adventurers flocked from east, north,
and south to enroll themselves in the Norman ranks. Alan of Brittany
was ready to command his forces in person and to come to William's
assistance, and so was Eustace of Boulogne, but the French nobles
who gathered about their young King Philip, still under Baldwin of
Flanders's guardianship, were by no means willing to help forward any
thing that would make their Norman rivals any more powerful than they
were already. From Flanders there were plenty of adventurers, and some
high noblemen who needed little urging to join their fortunes to such
an expedition, and William sent embassies to more distant countries
still, with better or worse results. There is a tradition that even
the Normans of Sicily came northward in great numbers.
The most important thing, next to carrying a [Pg286] sufficient force
into England, was to leave the Norman borders secure from invasion. If
they were repulsed in England and returned to find they had lost part
of Normandy, that would be a sorry fate indeed, and the duke exerted
himself in every way to leave his territory secure.
The most powerful alliance was that with the papal court at Rome. Here
Lanfranc could serve his adopted country to good effect. Hildebrand's
power was making itself felt more and more, and it was he who most
ardently desired and fostered the claim of the Church to a mastery of
all the crowns of Christendom. "The decree went forth, which declared
Harold to be a usurper and William to be the lawful claimant of
the English crown. It would even seem that it declared the English
king and all his followers to be cut off from the communion of the
faithful. William was sent forth as an avenger to chastise the wrong
and perjury of his faithless vassal. But he was also sent forth as a
missionary, to guide the erring English into the true path, to teach
them due obedience to Christ's vicar, and to secure a more punctual
payment of the temporal dues of his apostle. The cause of the invasion
was blessed, and precious gifts were sent as the visible exponents
of the blessing. A costly ring was sent, containing a relic, holier,
it may be, than any on which Harold had sworn—a hair of the prince
of the apostles. And with the ring came a consecrated banner."[10]
These were, after all, more formidable weapons than the Norman arrows.
They inspired [Pg287] not only courage, but a sense of duty and of
righteous service of God. Alas for poor humanity that lends itself so
readily to wrongdoing, and even hopes to win heaven by making this
earth a place of bloodshed and treachery. Now, William had something
besides English lands and high places for knight and priest alike on
conquered soil—he could give security and eminence in the world to
come. Heaven itself had been promised by its chief representative
on earth to those who would fight for the Duke of Normandy against
England. Hildebrand had made a last appeal to the holy assembly of
cardinals when he told the story of the profaned relics and Harold's
broken oath, and had urged the willing fathers of the church to
consider how pious and benevolent it would be to Christianize the
barbarous and heathen Saxons. Nobody took pains to remember that the
priesthood of England owned a third of the English lands, and ruled
them with a rod of iron. So long as England would not bend the knee to
Rome, what did all that matter?
[10] Freeman, "The Norman Conquest."
One significant thing happened at this time. Who should make his
appearance at the duke's court but Tostig, the son of Godwine, eager,
no doubt, to plot against Harold, and to take a sufficient revenge for
the banishment and defeat by means of which he was then an outcast.
He did not linger long, for the busy duke sent him quickly away, not
uncommissioned for the war that was almost ready to begin.
Harold also had set himself at work to gather his forces and to be
in readiness for an attack which was sure to come. Another enemy was
first in the field, [Pg288] for in the spring Tostig appeared in
the Isle of Wight, the captain of a fleet of ships that were manned
by Flemish and Norman men. He had received aid from William, and
proceeded to wreak his vengeance upon the Kent and Sussex villages
over which his father had once ruled. He does not appear to have
gained any English allies, except at the seaport of Sandwich, where he
probably hired some sailors; then he went northward from there with
sixty ships and attacked the coast of Godwine's earldom. He made great
havoc in the shore towns, but Eadwine and Morkere of Northumberland
hurried to meet him with their troops and drove him away, so that
with only twelve ships left he went to Scotland, where Malcolm, the
Scottish king received him with a hearty welcome, and entertained him
politely the rest of the summer. They had lately been sworn enemies,
but now that Tostig was fighting against England, Malcolm put aside
all bygone prejudice.
[Illustration: ENGLAND.]
In the summer of that eventful year, Tostig first proposed to the king
of Denmark that he should come to England and help him to recover his
earldom. Swegen had the good sense to refuse, and then the outlaw went
on to Norway to make further proposals to Harold Hardrada, who also
listened incredulously, but when Tostig suggested that Harold should
be king of England, and that he would only ask to be under-king of the
northern territory, that he would do homage to Harold and serve him
loyally, the great Norwegian chieftain consented to make ready for an
expedition. He seems to have been much like Rolf the Ganger, and a
true, valiant viking at heart. [Pg290] The old saga whence the story
comes makes us forget the plottings and claims of Rome and the glories
of Norman court life; the accounts of Harold Hardrada's expedition are
like a breath of cold wind from the Northern shores, and the sight
of a shining dragon-ship stealing away between the high shores of a
fiord, outward-bound for a bout of plundering. But the saga records
also the fame and prowess of that other Harold, the son of Godwine,
and magnifies the power of such an enemy.
Perhaps the English king trusted at first in the ability of the
northern earls to take care of their own territory, and only tried to
stand guard over the southern coast.
He gathered an army and kept it together all the latter part of the
summer, a most unprecedented and difficult thing in those days; and
with help from the local forces, or what we should call the militia,
his soldiers kept guard along the shores of Sussex and Kent. We cannot
estimate what a troublesome step forward in the art of warfare this
was for Englishmen, who were used to quick forced marches and decisive
battles, and a welcome dispersion after the cessation of whatever
exciting cause or sudden summons had gathered them.
Harold's ships patrolled the Channel and the footsoldiers paced the
downs, but food, always hard to obtain, became at last impossible, and
in September the army broke ranks. Harold himself went back to London,
whither the fleet was also sent, but on the way it met with disaster,
and many of the ships were lost and many more began to leak and were
reluctantly [Pg291] judged unseaworthy. The whole southern coast was
left undefended; it was neither the king's fault nor the subjects'
fault. Both had done their best,—but the crops must be gathered then
or not at all, and at any rate, the army was weakened by famine and a
growing belief in the uncertainty of attack.
Alas for Harold's peace of mind! In those very days William the
Norman's host was clustering and gathering like bees just ready to
swarm, on the coast of Normandy, and from the mouth of the Bergen
fiord came Harold Hardrada with a great company, with a huge mass of
treasure, such as had not for years and years floated away from a
Northern haven. It seems as if he had determined to migrate, to crush
the English usurper, and then to establish himself as Cnut had done in
the richer southern kingdom. There must have been some knowledge in
Norway of the state of things in England and Normandy, but this famous
old adventurer was ready to fight whoever he met, and the Black Raven
was flying at his masthead. Bad omens cast their shadows over this
great expedition of the last of the sea-kings, but away he sailed to
the Shetland Islands and left his wife and daughters there, while he
gained new allies; and still farther south, Tostig came to meet him
with a new army which he had gathered in Flanders. An Irish chieftain
and a great lord from Iceland were there too, and down they all came
upon the defenceless country that was marked as their prey, burning
and destroying church and castle and humble homestead, daring the
Englishmen to come out and fight and drive them away again. We have
no time [Pg292] to trace their lawless campaign. The two northern
earls summoned their vassals, but in a few days after the Northmen had
landed they had taken, without much trouble it appears to us, the city
of York, and news was hurriedly sent to the king of England.
What a grievous message! Harold, the son of Godwine, was ill, his
southern coast was undefended, still he could not forget the message
that William had sent to him late in the summer by a spy who had
crossed to Normandy, that the Normans would soon come and teach him
how many they were and what they could do. But a holy abbot consoled
the king by telling him that Eadward the Confessor had shown himself
in a vision and assured his successor of certain victory.
The prophecy was proved to be true; the king summoned his strength
and his soldiers and marched to York. There King Harold was to set
up his new kingdom; he had not the desire for revenge that filled
Tostig's breast, and was anxious to prove himself a generous and wise
ruler. As he came toward the walls which had been so easily won, the
rival Harold's army comes in sight—first a great cloud of dust like
a whirlwind, and next the shining spears prick through and glitter
ominously. A little later Harold of England sends a message to his
brother Tostig. He shall have again his kingdom of Northumberland if
he will be loyal; and Tostig sends back a message in his turn to ask
what shall be the portion of Harold Hardrada. "Seven feet of English
ground for his grave," says the other Harold, and the fight begins.
[Pg293]
Alas for the tall Northman, the winner of eighty castles from the
Saracens, the scourge of Moslem and robber in Palestine; the ally of
Sicily, of Russia, and the Greeks! Alas for the kingdom he had lightly
lost in Norway! Alas for the wife and daughters who were watching
all through those shortening September days in the Orkneys for the
triumphant return of the fleet—for Harold the saga-man and sea-king,
who built his hopes too high. He may be fierce with the old rage of
the Berserkers, and lay sturdily about him with his heavy two-handed
sword; he may mow down great swaths of Englishmen like grain, but the
moment comes when an arrow flies with its sharp whistle straight at
his throat, and he falls dead, and his best fighters fall in heaps
above him; the flag of the Black Raven of Norway is taken. Tostig is
dead, and Harold of England is winner of that great day at Stamford
Bridge, the last great victory that he and his men would ever win,
the last fight of England before the Conquest. Out of the crowd of
ships that had come from the North only four and twenty sailed away
again, and Harold made peace with the Orkney-men and the Icelanders
and the rest. Since that day there has been peace between England and
the countries of the Northern Seas. Harold's last victory was with
the past, one might say, with the Northmen of another age and time,
as if the last tie of his country were broken with the old warfare
and earlier enemies. New relationships were established, the final
struggle for mastery was decided. The battle of Stamford Bridge might
have been called a deadly [Pg294] game at jousting, and the English
knight receives the prize and rides home the victor of the tournament.
Yet that very day of triumph saw the approach of a new foe—the Norman
ships full of horses and men are ready to put out for the English
shore. Harold must fight another battle and lose it, and a new order
of things must begin in Britain. The Northmen and the Normans; it is a
long step between the two, and yet England's past and her future meet;
the swordsmen's arms that ache from one battle must try their strength
again in another; but the Normans bring great gifts at the point of
their arrows—without them "England would have been mechanical, not
artistic; brave, not chivalrous; the home of learning, not of thought."
Three days after the fight Harold sits at a splendid banquet among
his friends, and a breathless messenger comes in fleet-footed with
bad news. Muster your axemen and lances, Harold, King of the English;
the Normans have come like a flight of locusts and are landing on the
coast of Kent.
[Illustration]
[Pg295]
[Illustration]
XV.
THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS.
"I see thy glory, like a shooting star,
Fall to the base earth from the firmament!
Thy sun sets weeping in the lowly west."
—SHAKESPEARE.
Early in the summer there was a sound of wood-chopping and a crash of
falling trees in the forests of Normandy, and along her shores in the
shipyards the noise of shipwrights' mallets began, and the forging of
bolts and chains. The hemp-fields enlarge their borders, and catch the
eye quickly with their brilliant green leafage. There is no better
trade now than that of the armorer's, and many a Norman knight sees
to it that the links of his chain-mail jerkin and helmet are strongly
sewn, and that he is likely to be well defended by the clanking habit
that he must buckle on. Horses and men are drilling in the castle
yards, and every baron gathers his troop, and is stern in his orders
and authority. The churches are crowded, the priests are urging the
holy cause, and war is in everybody's mind. The cherry blossoms whiten
and fall, the apple-trees are covered with rosy snow, mid-summer sees
the young fruit greaten on the boughs, the sun rides high in the sky,
[Pg296] and the soldiers' mail weighs heavy; through the country-lanes
go troops of footmen and horsemen. You can see the tips of their
unstrung bows moving above the hedges, and their furled banners with
heraldic device or pious seal. They are all going toward the sea,
toward the mouth of the river Dive. The peasant women and children
stand in their cottage doors and watch the straggling processions on
their way. It is indeed a cause to aid with one's prayers, this war
against the heathen English.
All summer long, armed men were collecting at William's head-quarters
from every part of Normandy, or wherever his summons had wakened
a favorable response. If we can believe the chroniclers, the army
was well paid and well fed and kept in good order. It became a
question which army would hold its ground longest; Harold's, on the
Sussex downs, or William's, by the Dive. At last, news was brought
that the Englishmen were disbanded, then the Frenchmen—as we begin
to hear our Normans called,—the Frenchmen begin to make ready for
their expedition. There may have been skirmishes by sea in the hot
weather, but it was not until early autumn that William gave orders to
embark. There are different stories about the magnitude of the force.
The defeated party would have us believe that they were enormously
overpowered, and so set the numbers very high; the conquerors, on the
other hand, insist that they had not quantity so much as quality to
serve them in the fight, and that it was not the size of their army
but the valor of it that won the day. We are told that there were six
hundred and ninety-six [Pg297] ships and fourteen thousand men; we
are told also that there were more than three thousand ships and sixty
thousand men, all told; and other accounts range between these two
extremes.
[Illustration: NORMAN VESSEL. (FROM BAYEUX TAPESTRY.)]
For a month the Norman army waited at the mouth of the Dive for a
south wind, but no south wind blew, while an adverse storm scattered
them and strewed the shore with Norman bodies. At last, the duke took
advantage of a westerly breeze and set sail for St. Valery, off the
coast of Ponthieu, from whence he hoped to go more easily over to
England. At the famous abbey of St. Valery he was saying his prayers
and watching the weather-cocks for fifteen days, and he and his
captains made generous offerings at the holy shrines. The monks came
out at last in solemn procession bearing their sacred relics, and the
Norman host knelt devoutly and did homage. [Pg298] At Caen, in June,
the two great minsters had been dedicated, and William and Matilda had
given their young daughter Cecily to the service of God, together with
rich offerings of lands and money. In their own churches, therefore,
and at many another Norman altar beside, prayer and praise never
ceased in those days while Harold was marching to Stamford Bridge.
At last, on Wednesday, the twenty-seventh of September, the wind went
round to the southward, and the great fleet sailed. The soldiers
believed that their prayers had been answered, and that they were the
favorites of heaven. They crowded on board the transport-ships, and
were heedless of every thing save that they were not left behind, and
had their armor and weapons ready for use. The trumpets were playing,
their voices cried loud above the music that echoed back in eager
strains from the shore. The horsemen shouted at their horses, and
the open ships were plainer copies of the dragon-ships of old; they
carried gayly dressed gentlemen, and shining gonfanons, and thickets
of glittering spears. The shields were rich with heraldic blazoning,
and the golden ship, Mora, that the Duchess Matilda had given to the
duke, shone splendid on the gray water, as just at evening William
himself set sail and turned the gilded figure of a boy blowing an
ivory trumpet, like some herald of certain victory, toward the shore
of Kent. The Pope's sacred banner was given to the welcome breeze,
and William's own standard, figured with the three lions of Normandy,
fluttered and spread itself wide. The [Pg299] colored sails looked
gay, the soldiers sang and cheered, and away they went without a fear,
these blessed Normans of the year 1066. On the Mora's masthead blazed
a great lantern when the darkness fell. It was a cloudy night.
In the early morning, the Mora being lighter-laden than the rest,
found herself alone on the sea, out of sight of either land or ships,
but presently the loitering forest of masts rose into view. At nine
o'clock William had landed at Pevensey on the Sussex shore. As he
set foot for the second time on English soil, he tripped and fell,
and the bystanders gave a woful groan at such a disastrous omen. "By
the splendor of God," cried the duke, in his favorite oath, "I have
taken seizin of my kingdom; see the earth of England in my two hands!"
at which ready turn of wit a soldier pulled a handful of thatch
from a cottage roof and gave it to his master for a further token
of proprietorship. This also was seizin of all that England herself
embraced.
There was nobody to hinder the Normans from landing or going where
they pleased. At Pevensey they stayed only one day for lack of
supplies, and then set out eastward toward Hastings. In the Bayeux
tapestry, perhaps the most reliable authority so far as it goes, there
is an appealing bit of work that pictures a burning house with a woman
and little child making their escape. The only places of safety, we
are told elsewhere, were the churchyards and the churches. William's
piety could hardly let him destroy even an enemy's sacred places of
worship. [Pg300]
The next few days were filled with uncertainty and excited expectancy.
Clearly there was no army in the immediate neighborhood of Hastings;
the Normans had that part of the world to themselves apparently, and
hours and days went by leaving them undisturbed. Many a voice urged
that they might march farther into the country, but their wary leader
possessed his soul in patience, and at last came the news of the great
battle in the north, of Harold's occupation of York, and the terrible
disaster that had befallen the multitude of Harold Hardrada and
Tostig, with their allies. Now, too, came a message to the duke from
Norman Robert the Staller, who had stood by the Confessor's death-bed,
and who kept a warm heart for the country of his birth, though he had
become a loyal Englishman in his later years. Twenty thousand men have
been slain in the north, he sends word to William; the English were
mad with pride and rejoicing. The Normans were not strong enough nor
many enough to risk a battle; they would be like dogs among wolves,
and would be worse than overthrown. But William was scornful of such
advice—he had come to fight Harold, and he would meet him face to
face—he would risk the battle if he had only a sixth part as many men
as followed him, eager as himself for his rights.
[Illustration: WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. (BAYEUX TAPESTRY.)]
Harold had bestirred his feasting and idle army, and held council of
his captains at York. Normans and French and the men of Brittany had
landed at Pevensey in numbers like the sand of the sea and the stars
of heaven. If only the south wind had [Pg302] blown before, so that
he might have met these invaders with his valiant army, too soon
dispersed! To have beaten back William and then have marched north
to Stamford Bridge, that, indeed, would have been a noble record.
Now the Normans were burning and destroying unhindered in the south;
what should be done? And every captain-baron of the English gave his
word that he would call no man king but Harold the son of Godwine;
and with little rest from the battle just fought, they made ready
to march to London. They knew well enough what this new invasion
meant; a prophetic dread filled their hearts, for it was not alone
out of loyalty to Harold, but for love of England, that these men of
different speech and instincts must be pushed off the soil to which
they had no lawful claim.