The passing from the scene of the strangely unsubstantial and shadowy figure of the sainted Eadward ‘the Confessor’ was the signal for the bursting of the storm that was to overwhelm Anglo-Saxon England. For the last thirteen years of his reign the country had been practically governed by his great minister, Harold Godwineson, Earl of Wessex. Harold’s character has suffered much at the hands of Norman chroniclers; there is no real reason to think that he was morally worse than most men of his age. His practical ability was of a high order, and while administering the realm with success, he also gave proofs that he possessed tact and moderation. At the same time, his general success cannot hide the fact that England lacked political unity; it was a group of great family earldoms, whose heads looked upon each other with jealousy and distrust. Harold seems to have behaved with remarkable forbearance and friendliness towards the rival house of Leofric, and though he had more than one opportunity of aggrandizing his family at their expense, the death of Eadward the Confessor found Eadwine and Morkere, grandsons of Leofric, still ruling over his broad lands.

Eadward the Confessor’s fondness for the Normans among whom he had been brought up was natural enough, and it is quite possible that the dominating personality of his cousin, William of Normandy, on the occasion of his visit in 1051, so impressed him that he made some sort of promise of leaving him his heir. At any rate when Harold, in 1064, after his shipwreck in the Channel, became William’s unwilling guest, the Duke had no scruple in exacting from him an oath of support. The decorative adjuncts—‘holy’ relics, and so forth—which he contrived in order to impress the superstitious bystanders, certainly had the desired effect on contemporary public opinion. Harold left as a hostage with William his hapless youngest brother Wulfnoth, destined to die in captivity.

But when Eadward the Confessor died on January 5, 1066, he, according to the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,’ left his realm to Harold. The ‘Vita Eadwardi’ says much the same. It seems, also, that the Witan had already chosen Harold, for he was crowned the next day in the new Abbey Church of Westminster. It is a curious reflection that the great church, which was consecrated as the old king lay dying, was, in a sense, the funeral monument of early English times.

Harold was threatened with attack from three quarters—perhaps four. It was certain that William of Normandy would attempt an invasion at the first opportunity. Harald Hardrada of Norway, the last of the great Viking monarchs, was known to be ready for any opportunity of aggrandizement. Sweyn Estrithson of Denmark, cousin of Harthacnut, might deem the moment favourable for advancing his claims. Finally, Tosti, Harold’s worthless brother, was preparing to regain by force his forfeited Northumbrian earldom. Internally, the Northern earls were lukewarm in Harold’s cause. They were men of little mark, but they controlled nearly half England, and their disaffection was a very serious matter. Truly, says the Chronicle of Harold, ‘little quiet did he enjoy while he wielded the kingdom.’

When the news of Harold’s coronation reached Normandy, William broke out into one of those terrible bursts of savage rage to which he was subject in times of stress. ‘To no man spake he, and none dared speak to him,’ says a chronicler. After his fit of passion was over he announced his intention of invading England. He called an assembly of his barons at Lillebonne on the Seine, and set forth his ideas, but they hung back; England seemed too strong. He then appealed to their individual loyalty, promising to reward them with English lands in proportion to the contingents that they furnished, and with this inducement practically the entire baronage of Normandy agreed to join in the enterprise. But the forces of Normandy alone were not strong enough, and William used every means to induce neighbouring princes and adventurers to join his standard. Eustace, Count of Boulogne, who had a private grudge against England, and Alan Fergent, cousin of the Duke of Brittany, were the most notable of these foreign allies; but adventurers from all France came in numbers, and even, so Guy of Amiens says, some of the Normans who were conquering Southern Italy from the Eastern Empire. Many months were needed before the miscellaneous host could be gathered, and hundreds of ships had to be built and launched for the transport of the fighting men, followers, the provisions, and, above all, the thousands of horses, without which the mailed knights would lose three-quarters of their efficiency. Wace tells us that the number of vessels that actually sailed was 696; other chroniclers raise it to 3,000. In this conflict of evidence the figures given by Wace have a strong appearance of veracity. Most of the vessels were doubtless small.

The number of the army is stated at from 40,000 to 60,000 by mediÆval chroniclers. Some modern estimates put it as low as 12,000. There are no solid grounds upon which to base a reasoned estimate. After the Conquest there were about 4,300 knight’s fiefs in England. The casualties among the invaders were enormous, but the gaps were filled by fresh adventurers, and certainly not all the English landowners were dispossessed. We are, perhaps, justified in assuming 4,000 cavalry, about 4,000 archers, and possibly 7,000 mail-clad infantry—say 15,000 men in all.

William had the support of religion in his enterprise in so far as it could be given by a papal bull. There had been, even under the pious Confessor, irregularity in the filling up of the episcopal sees; in particular, the position of Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, was a scandal. This, and Harold’s perjury, induced the support of Alexander II., and a consecrated banner was sent to William with the bull.

The gathering-place of the army of invasion was at the mouth of the Dive. The Norman writers are eloquent upon the admirable order and discipline that prevailed in the camp, and, beyond doubt, William did keep his own subjects well in hand; but that the same was the case with the motley throng of allies is hardly possible. Still, knowing what manner of man William was, it is likely enough that his standard of discipline was, for the time, a very creditable one. Moreover, when the army came to fight it showed itself to be very different from the usual disorderly mediÆval horde—highly trained, flexible, precise in manoeuvre, and under excellent discipline. Its organization was clearly Byzantine. The three East-Roman arms—archers, heavy infantry, and mailed cavalry—were all there. An East-Roman army would have had nearly as many cavalry as infantry, if it had used infantry at all to back its masses of mail-clad horse-bowmen and lancers, but William’s resources were unequal to putting many thousands of mounted men in the field. As it is, it is evident that his army was by far the finest force that had ever invaded England.

By about August 10 the concentration appears to have been almost complete, but for a month no move could be made owing to persistently contrary winds. The difficulties of supply must have become greater and greater, and in September William moved to the Abbey of St. Walaric, now St. Valery, in Caux. Still for a fortnight longer the favouring wind did not come.

Meanwhile Tosti had long since sailed. His attack was made apparently in conjunction with Harald Hardrada. He had in Flanders collected enough miscellaneous adventurers to man sixty ships, but his impatience—probably he could not keep his plundering bands together—wrecked the design of co-operation with Hardrada. The Norwegian king was collecting a great armament, and probably its concentration took time. At any rate, he did not appear in English waters until August.

Harold, meanwhile, was organizing for defence. His only standing force consisted of the Hus-Carles, or royal household troops—4,000 men at the utmost. They were, unquestionably, a magnificent body of men, fully equal in quality to William’s knighthood, equipped like them with helmet and mail-shirt, kite-shaped shield, and armed with the terrible battle-axe, which England had adopted from Denmark. Unfortunately, however, though they habitually used horses on the march, they had no experience of, or training in, fighting on horseback—a fatal defect.

The land fyrd, on the other hand, was difficult to move. It is easy to under-estimate its value; there must have been a large number of men in it fully armed and equipped for war; but they were never properly drilled and exercised together, and were mingled with half-armed peasantry. Still, considering the large numbers of the men liable for service, it must have been comparatively easy to collect a considerable force of properly equipped troops, but it entirely lacked cavalry and archers.

MediÆval feudal armies practically depended for supplies on plunder, and were consequently always liable to dissolve. Here and there we find men—great generals like William I. and Edward I.—who understood how to organize a proper commissariat, but they were few and far between. Apparently Harold II. was one of them, for there is no doubt that he kept a large army together on the south coast for several months.

The defence of the north was, of course, entrusted to the earls Eadwine and Morkere; no other course was possible. Nor, upon the whole, does it seem that they failed to do their duty. Harold was in Northumbria early in the year, and no doubt did his best to conciliate them. Otherwise he seems to have been very active, and Florence of Worcester says that his activity was highly beneficial, but significantly adds that his chief efforts were for the defence of the country. In April Halley’s Comet made one of its recurring appearances, and, needless to say, was looked upon as the forerunner of coming evil.

Under the great West Saxon kings, as we have seen, England possessed an effective navy, but it is very doubtful whether under Eadward the Confessor any large force had been kept up. Harold’s defensive armada must have consisted largely of levied merchant craft. It collected off the Isle of Wight—obviously in Spithead—and there awaited the coming of the invaders. The forces of the south were stationed ‘by the sea’—presumably in divisions within easy reach of one another—and the King himself with his guards formed a reserve which could be transferred north or south at will.

The defects of this strategy are obvious enough. It was solely defensive. No attempt was made to stop the sailing of the hostile fleets; even Tosti’s puny armament was allowed to reach England without molestation. The splendid marching and fighting feats of the royal guards show that their efficiency was high. A commissariat sufficient to supply a large force for several months had evidently been organized; but all this proved useless owing to the bad initial strategy of standing purely on the defensive.

In May Tosti appeared on the coast of Kent. Apparently Harold was already on the south coast, for we are told that he at once moved against him with a fleet and an army such as no King of England had ever gathered. Tosti, who had made plundering descents on the coast and had also endeavoured to increase his small force by forced impressment, did not await the onslaught, but fled. His second descent was made in the Humber. Earl Eadwine promptly set upon and defeated him; his miscellaneous force broke up, and Tosti himself fled northward to Scotland with only twelve ships. Here he seems to have been sheltered by Malcolm Canmore; presumably the Scottish king dared not eject him, when at any moment the formidable Harald Hardrada might appear.

Harold and William lay watching each other across the Channel all through the summer. When William’s host had at last gathered, the wind, as we have seen, was contrary, and for nearly two months he could not stir. This was fortunate for him; had he sailed in August, he would have been attacked by Harold’s fleet, and his own flotilla, crowded with troops and thousands of horses, would have fared badly. Even had the Normans gained the day they would have hardly been able to land. It was a trial of endurance. On September 8 the English fleet had exhausted its stores, and was forced to return to London to reprovision and refit. Still the land army remained in the south, but a week later came the news that Harald Hardrada was in the Humber.

The consequences of Harold’s purely defensive strategy now stared him in the face. The fleet was for the time entirely off the board, but to concentrate against Hardrada was a vital necessity. Harold marched northward without delay, and certainly strove to make up for strategic errors by activity. From Portsmouth to York is over 250 miles, but the distance was covered in ten days. Obviously Harold’s whole corps must have been mounted; but even so it was a remarkable performance.

Hardrada, having picked up Tosti and the remains of his expedition, proceeded southward along the coast of Northumbria, landing and ravaging in the old Viking fashion. Scarborough was taken and sacked, and the Norwegian fleet sailed up the Humber and landed its army, which marched upon York. Eadwine and Morkere had united their forces, and stood to fight at Fulford, two miles south of the Northumbrian capital, where they were attacked by Hardrada on September 20, and completely defeated. The remains of their army took refuge in York, and so cowed were the Northumbrians that they offered 150 hostages as a pledge of their submission. Hardrada probably thought himself secure; he withdrew to the Derwent, seven miles east of York, and was encamped carelessly on both its banks, about Stamford Bridge, when on September 25 Harold, having passed through York, came upon him. No hint of his approach seems to have preceded him. The speed and secrecy of the march are alike remarkable.

The attack fell like a thunderbolt on the unprepared Norwegians. Scattered, astounded, and without time to form order of battle, they were massacred right and left, and driven towards the Derwent in a confusion that can only have tended to grow greater. The bridge was desperately defended, and under cover of the stand Hardrada’s personal following seems to have been able to rally on the ‘Land-ravager’—the raven standard of the Vikings. After a series of fierce attacks the shield ring was broken, Hardrada and Tosti were slain, and Olaf, the king’s son, surrendered, on promise of being allowed to depart with the survivors. They are said to have been able to man only 24 ships of the original 300. We may suspect exaggeration.

Harold returned in triumph to York, where he seems to have delayed for a week or so; doubtless his troops, after their exertions, needed a rest. The northern levies also must have required reorganization. In the midst of toils and rejoicings came the terrible news that William was in Sussex.

On September 27 the long-sought-for south wind blew at last, and the huge unwieldy Norman fleet put out from St. Walaric. William’s flagship was the Mora, a gallant vessel given to him by his wife Matilda. She bore on her stern a gilded figure of a boy bearing a banner, as the Bayeux tapestry clearly indicates.

From St. Valery-en-Caux to Pevensey is less than sixty-five miles, and the fact that the flotilla took, apparently, nearly two days to cover it, gives some index to its encumbered condition. None the less, it sailed in something like order, guided by a huge lantern at the masthead of the Mora. On the 28th it reached Pevensey, and the disembarkation was quietly effected. William himself stumbled and fell on his face as he sprang ashore. A murmur of dismay rose from the superstition-ridden barons behind, but he sprang to his feet and showed them that as he fell he had clutched up the sand with both hands. ‘See how I have taken possession of England!’ he cried, and his followers hailed the omen of good as readily as they had trembled at the accident. It was one of those incidents that mark the born leader of men.

From Pevensey William moved to Hastings, which he occupied without resistance. A palisaded fort is said to have been constructed; one wonders why William did not encamp within the splendid Roman walls of Pevensey. He then began to waste the coast districts in the neighbourhood, partly perhaps in order to provoke his rival to an engagement, but also, probably, in part for purposes of supply.

Wonderful as had been Harold’s march to York, his rush back to London was yet more so. He covered the distance of over 190 miles in seven days at the outside, perhaps in six, an average of 27 or 32 miles a day! On October 7 he was in London. Eadwine and Morkere were still far behind. They have been severely blamed for their slowness; but it is only fair to point out that their levies had been sorely thinned at Fulford and Stamford Bridge, and that the collection and organization of reinforcements can have been no easy task. If the northern troops started only a day behind Harold and marched at the very fair rate of eighteen miles a day, they must have still been some distance from London when he left it for the south. Probably Eadwine and Morkere failed to realize the urgency of the crisis; but, on the other hand, Harold’s precipitancy must have been disconcerting.

The King stayed only some four days in London. On the 11th he marched again, presumably with the royal guards and the men of London and the home counties. He again pressed forward with great speed; the rate of marching was over eighteen miles a day. On the afternoon of the 13th the head of the column was on Senlac Hill, eight miles from Hastings, and there, no doubt, the King could question peasants and could ascertain that William had concentrated his army.

That he had had hopes of repeating his feat at Stamford Bridge seems almost certain. The authorities are practically unanimous in stating or implying that his army would have been strongly reinforced had he delayed a little, and that he did not do so is best explained by his anxiety to execute another surprise attack on an unprepared enemy. As this plan had obviously failed, it was to his interest to avoid a battle; and the general opinion at the time evidently was that he was unwise to risk one. The story that his brother Gyrth would have dissuaded him from engaging, but that he declined to look on while his people were pillaged by the Norman raiders, may be taken for what it is worth, but it points to the prevalence of this opinion. The most probable explanation is that the weary and ill-disciplined army could not be withdrawn in the darkness from the ridge on which it was bivouacking, and it was therefore necessary to remain there for the night. William on his side was obliged to fight. His army subsisted by pillage, and would starve if it were forced to remain long in a state of close concentration. He had early notice of his rival’s advance, and had his army in hand about Hastings. He was at Telham so early on the morning of the 14th that to decline a battle was difficult, if not impossible, for Harold. With disciplined troops a retreat would have been practicable enough, but it was not so for the cumbrous English host. Perhaps, too, Harold overrated the fighting power of his axemen. In any case, it is clear that he stood to receive battle when retreat was his wisest strategy.

Senlac Hill is an outlying spur of the South Downs, roughly parallel to them, and connected with them by a short saddleback. The main ridge is about 280 feet above the sea at its culminating point, and nearly 1,200 yards long. The road from London passes along the saddleback, over the ridge towards its eastern end, and across a valley to Telham Hill, about a mile distant. The slope of the ridge in front is fairly gentle, but where the remains of the Abbey now stand it rises steeply to a commanding knoll. The exact gradient is difficult to estimate, for when the Abbey was built the slope was much altered by terracing, which exists to-day. On both flanks—especially the left—and on the rear, except where the road approaches, the slopes are steep. For over half its length the front face of the ridge is covered by a brook and a line of ponds. In 1066 in their place there was most probably a marsh, almost impassable for cavalry. Even at the present day the ground just below the ponds becomes extremely difficult for a horseman. The western half of the position could probably only have been assailed by the very dangerous process of filing horsemen round the end of the marsh, and advancing them in front of it. This actually appears to have been attempted by part of the Norman army; but it was only possible to deliver direct attacks on a front of about 750 yards. In this narrow space the deadliest fighting took place. Behind all was the forest of the Andredsweald.

The strength of the English army can only be guessed at. According to the earlier writers it was densely massed along the ridge, but it is probable that the almost unassailable western end was not held in force. On the other hand, the eastward portions were probably very strongly held. There may have been in all about 15,000 men. About half the troops were probably fully equipped men, and in their strong position were capable of beating off an attack of any other army in Western Europe, except the one that now faced them. As compared with it the English, without archers or cavalry, were at a hopeless disadvantage, but even as it was they came very near success.

The question of fortification has been often discussed. None of the earlier writers mention any, nor are any shown on the Bayeux tapestry, the workers of which would very probably have had William’s own personal account to go upon. Wace appears to describe a sort of wicker breastwork. So much is certain, that the English troops reached the ground too late and too fatigued to be able to carry out much entrenching work. The cries of ‘Út! Út!’ (Out! Out!), attributed to the English, may perhaps indicate that they conceived themselves to occupy an entrenched enclosure; but it may just as well refer to the impatience of men pent up in the shield-ring under a storm of arrows.

The Norman army advancing from Hastings reached Telham early in the morning. An interesting detail is that the knights rode in their tunics and did not don their armour until they reached the field. At the foot of Telham the army deployed in three divisions, each of three lines classified according to arms. The front line consisted of archers and crossbow-men—there were some of these latter present; the second of mail-clad infantry; the third of the cavalry. The right wing consisted mainly of the French and Flemish mercenaries under Eustace of Boulogne and the Norman baron Roger de Montgomerie. On the left were the Breton Angevin and Aquitanian troops. William himself was in the centre with his Normans. Ralph de Toesny, the hereditary standard-bearer of Normandy, had begged to be allowed to ‘fight with both hands’ on that day; and Walter Giffard de Longueville declined to bear the Pope’s banner. He was old, he said, and would like to do a last good day’s fighting. So the standard was borne at William’s side by Toustain de Bec-en-Caux. William himself bore on this day not the lance, which was still a light weapon often used for throwing, but a ponderous iron mace, and with him rode his brothers Odo of Bayeux and Robert of Mortain.

As the Normans marched down Telham, Senlac suddenly appeared to be crowned with a dense line of axes and shields. The English seemed to spring out of the wood, says Guy of Amiens. This may indicate that they were taken by surprise, and hastily faced about to meet the unexpected approach of the Normans. The royal guards were on the left centre, with the Dragon of Wessex and the King’s Warrior banner planted where the altar of Battle Abbey afterwards rose. With the guards almost certainly were the Londoners, who were probably the best equipped troops of the fyrd. They were under Esegar, the first ‘Staller’ (Marshal). Everything seems to show that there was a solid mass of picked troops in the centre. The King, with his brothers Gyrth and Leofwine, was on foot by his standards surrounded by his incomparable footguards.

The Norman host advanced across the valley and began to breast Senlac Hill, the archers shooting furiously as soon as they came within range. For a while it was attack without defence, and it is odd that William does not appear to have seen that the bowmen could be left to prepare the way. The English could only suffer, and already, perhaps, impatient warriors were beginning to cry ‘Out! Out!’ yearning to exchange blows with their exasperating enemies. The archers, emboldened by their bloodless progress, pressed forward to close range, and then came the English reply. The leading ranks of the Normans were overwhelmed with a perfect hail of miscellaneous missiles—spears, javelins, casting-axes, and stones, some of the latter tied to clubs and hurled like hammers. The archers came to a stand, still plying their bows; and the heavy infantry pushed up between their intervals and came to handgrips with the English. Their charge broke vainly upon the shield-wall; not a gap could the Norman foot-soldiers tear in it. Javelins, taper-axes, and stone hammers crashed among them fast and furiously; the great axes swayed and fell with terrible effect. Do what they would they could make no progress.

Probably the Norman infantry were already falling back when William let loose his cavalry. No doubt the chivalry of France and Normandy expected to ride down the English infantry with ease. Out in front of the long moving line of horsemen, bright in their ringed mail shirts, rode the minstrel Taillefer, chanting verses from the ‘Song of Roland,’ playing with his sword as he pricked up the slope. He was the first of the knighthood to penetrate the shield-wall—also the first to fall. The long lines of horsemen crashed against the shields; the shock must have been tremendous, but their fortune was no better than that of their despised infantry. The English front may have been pressed back, even pierced in places, but the gaps were at once restored; man and horse went down beneath the tremendous strokes of the great axes, while from the rearward ranks of the English host the same tempest of darts, throwing-axes, and stone clubs crashed upon the mail and helmets of the charging cavaliers. After a furious struggle the Bretons and Angevins were repulsed and driven downhill. After them poured the ill-disciplined levies of the English right. The retreating horsemen blundered into the marsh, which they had avoided without difficulty as they advanced, and, with the English pressing furiously on their rear, were in wild disorder, when the victors were suddenly charged in flank by part of the Norman centre, turned against them by the watchful Duke. The results were terrible. The scattered warriors, many of them half-armed peasants, were overridden and cut down by hundreds, and only a remnant regained the position which they had so rashly left.

This, however, was only the beginning. William rallied the broken left wing, and again and again the fierce horsemen charged the immovable English line—in vain. Never had the knights seen or heard of such foot-soldiers as these. One tremendous charge led by William himself did burst through the shield-wall; and the brave Gyrth went down beneath the Duke’s terrible mace. Leofwine, too, was slain; but the charge was beaten off by a rally of the English axemen, and hurled downhill, and the cry went up that the Duke was slain. William flung himself among the panic-stricken knights: ‘I live! I live!’ he thundered, tearing off his helmet. ‘By God’s aid I will conquer yet!’ Out of evil came good—for Normandy.

Nearly the whole Norman line was apparently in disorder, but William rallied it again and brought it up to the charge, though it is evident that the attacks must have grown less and less effective as time went on, owing to the fatigue of the horses. At his wits’ end, William tried the expedient of a feigned retreat; and the French on the right recoiled, to all seeming broken and beaten, down the slope. This was too much for the greatly enduring Englishmen, and a great part of their left and centre came pouring down in pursuit. The retreating horsemen turned upon them; William assailed them in flank with troops from his centre. The carnage was great, and apparently the whole English left wing was annihilated. But the pursuing horsemen appear to have met with disaster in an unexpected trench or watercourse, and Bishop Odo of Bayeux had to ride among and steady them.

Still, the battle was far from over. The best part of the English army, including the royal household, was still ranged in dense masses on the crown of the hill. But their line was sorely reduced by the disaster of the wings, and the Norman cavalry could charge in front and flank. Inspired by the hope of victory, the knights hurled themselves again to the attack, but still in vain. The line of shields was an impregnable barrier; charge after charge recoiled from the steadfast front and to the fierce Norman war-cry of ‘Dex aie!’ (Dieu aide!) the English shouts of ‘Holy Cross!’ still thundered in defiant answer.

The Norman cavalry was growing more and more wearied and ineffective; the victory was far from decisive as long as the English centre still fought on. Then at last William did what he should have attempted long before, and brought his archers to the front. Any East-Roman tactician would have told him that the cavalry should never have attacked until the English masses had been thoroughly shattered by their fire, and the fact shows how low the art of war had fallen in the West. Between the cavalry attacks the bowmen poured in their volleys, shooting with a high trajectory so that the arrows were not wasted on the shield-wall, but made havoc in the heart of the dense mass. The device had terrible success. The picked warriors of England fell fast before the pitiless rain to which they could not reply. For the most part they could but suffer. Once or twice it seems that small bodies tried to charge out; now and again desperate warriors sprang forth to contend hand-to-hand with the Norman knights, but they only hastened their end. The splendid guards stood shoulder to shoulder in the mass, never wavering or faltering, but the losses were all on one side. Behind the unbroken shield-wall was an ever-increasing weltering confusion of dead and dying upon which the arrows beat pitilessly; and the King, mortally wounded in the eye, lay in agony beneath the standards. The position was desperate; but so long as the banners waved and the King lived there was no thought of yielding. But at last the fatal gaps could not be closed fast enough, and the Normans burst through the shield-wall. A band of knights hewed their way through the dissolving mass, cut down the faithful few round Harold, tore down the Dragon and the Warrior, and literally hacked the dying King to pieces at the foot of his banners.

And now the end had come. The noble English infantry, who had defied the Norman chivalry all day, and but for the archery would have beaten them to their ships, began—all that remained of them—to withdraw sullenly but hopelessly. Even yet they were not demoralized, and some were still in good order. As the little remnant got away across the saddleback into Andredsweald they saw the Normans plunging rashly in pursuit down the steep rearward slopes of Senlac. Turning to bay, true even in that hour of despair, to their noble warrior strain, they set upon the overweening horsemen, cut their leading squadrons to pieces, and drove them back on Senlac. Panic spread through the Norman army; Eustace of Boulogne is said to have counselled retreat, and it was only when William himself rallied his squadrons and brought them along the ridge in a properly ordered pursuit that the English finally melted away into the woods.

Looking at the battle after this length of time, it is clear that William only gained the day by desperate exertions, and that more than once success hung in the balance. Had the English army possessed a proportion of archers the day would have been Harold’s. It has been pointed out that not even a great fleet saved England from an attack by an invader prepared to take the risk of destruction. But it should be remembered that Harold’s flotilla was not a properly organized force, and cannot be compared to a modern fleet able to keep the sea for several months at a time. Even as it was, William was very near destruction though, so far as we can see, he caught Harold at a disadvantage. By calmly taking such risks as few men could contemplate unshaken, William did land in England, but his success was due to a very remarkable combination of circumstances which it would be well to recapitulate.

1. The English fleet, owing to its urgent need to revictual, was absent from the chief danger-point at the crucial moment, and at the rate of sailing in those days the Thames, even with favourable winds, was farther from Pevensey than Rosyth is to-day from Portsmouth.

2. The English army at the moment when the invasion was imminent was called to the defence of the north.

3. The wind which had baffled William for some six weeks shifted in his favour at the precise moment when the English fleet and army were absent.

4. The extraordinary rapidity of Harold’s southward march after his defeat of Hardrada left the disorganized Northumbrian and Mercian levies far in the rear.

5. The English were probably surprised into giving battle when Harold would have preferred to await support.

6. The English army was at a fatal tactical disadvantage owing to its lack of archers.

William’s losses had been exceedingly heavy. The mediÆval chroniclers estimate that he lost 12,000 to 15,000 men out of 40,000 to 60,000, and we may fairly estimate from this that his casualties were about a fourth of his fighting strength. But only a mere remnant of the English host survived the day, and with the King fell every man of note in southern England, except Esegar the Marshal, who was desperately wounded. This awful destruction of the leaders was the most disastrous feature of the battle. There was, as after-events showed, a complete dearth of men about whom the English might rally.

In many ways the Battle of Hastings was itself the Norman Conquest, though the events of the following two or three years are rather those which gave William his title of ‘Conqueror.’ The whole south-east of England had been utterly crushed; there remained for William only the conquest piecemeal of the west and north. Kent was conquered with scarcely any resistance, and William, advancing to the Thames, beat back a sortie of the Londoners, burned Southwark, and moved up the river feeling for a passage. Detachments from his army occupied Winchester and the neighbouring towns, and William, crossing the Thames at Wallingford, marched upon London. Eadwine and Morkere, who were there with the forces which had been too late for Senlac, lost their nerve when the Normans threatened their line of retreat to the north. They hurriedly withdrew, and the Londoners bowed to necessity. ‘They submitted then for need, when the most harm was done,’ mourns the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.’

There is no reason to doubt that William, when he promised to govern England well, had every intention of keeping his word. But he probably found it difficult from the outset to control the greedy adventurers who followed him; and in any case he was bound to reward them. When his strong hand was temporarily removed by his return to Normandy, the tyranny of Odo of Bayeux and the excesses of the foreign nobles and soldiers soon produced revolt. Yet there was nothing national in the various uprisings; north, east, and west acted independently, and of cordial co-operation there was not a sign. In 1067 William, returning from Normandy, subdued the west and captured Exeter. Then, marching northward, he overran Mercia and Northumbria. Nowhere was there anything like an effective resistance; such opposition as was made appears to have been mainly inspired by King Malcolm of Scotland. Strong garrisons were placed at York, Lincoln, Nottingham, and other places, and earthworks thrown up, which later were to grow into the frowning castles that have somewhat incorrectly been associated with the Norman Conquest.

The year 1069 saw the only serious and determined attempt to overthrow the Norman rule. A great Danish fleet, sent by Sweyn Estrithson, arrived in the Humber, joined the Northumbrians, and marched on York. It was stormed and captured, and 30,000 foreign soldiers, it is said, were slain or taken. But that was all, and the peril died down before William’s vehement energy. The Danish fleet was bought off—William was as ready as Philip of Macedonia to use ‘silver spears.’ Then the King reoccupied York, and, lest any succeeding Scandinavian invasion should find a foothold, wrought the awful devastation of the north—the worst deed that stains his otherwise not ignoble character. The north, wasted and ruined, was at his feet, and the reappearance next year of Sweyn with a great fleet ended in a mere fiasco. The Danes and the East Anglian rebels did little but plunder abbeys, and after sundry useless demonstrations the Danes returned home.

There now remained in all England in arms against William only the gathering in the Isle of Ely under the famous outlaw Hereward. Thither came sundry English leaders, powerless and discredited, who now could only swell the band of an erstwhile obscure chief. Eadwine had already disappeared—slain, so says the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,’ by his own men. Morkere succeeded in reaching Ely; but at best the leaders were but a poor remnant. The position of Ely, surrounded by its waters, was strong; but the garrison was not sufficiently numerous to take the offensive with any hope of success. William fixed his headquarters at Cambridge; a fleet was collected and brought up the Wash, and the lines of investment were steadily drawn round the doomed stronghold. A causeway was driven across the fens, and when at last it reached firm land, after many checks and surprises inflicted by the watchful Hereward, Ely was forced to surrender. Legends have clustered thickly about the figure of Hereward ‘the Wake.’ He was certainly taken into William’s favour, and was commanding troops for him on the Continent some years later. The mass of the rank and file, however, were treated with what seems to us horrible barbarity, being maimed and mutilated wholesale. The punishment of death the ‘stark’ and terrible Conqueror was always very chary of inflicting. Famous as the defence of Ely has become, it is noteworthy that the Chronicle does not seem to regard it as other than an isolated incident in the struggle. It is at any rate clear that it could never have done more than temporarily check the progress of the Conqueror, just as eighteen centuries before the defence of Eira could only delay the Spartan conquest of Messenia.

With the fall of Ely the Norman Conquest of England was complete. The country settled down beneath the yoke of William with resignation if not cheerfulness, and the lack of further outbreaks seems to indicate that after all his rule was not worse than that of his immediate predecessors. Perhaps one explanation of this submissiveness is that the English thegnhood emigrated to Constantinople in large numbers, so that the nation lacked its natural leaders, but something must be set to William’s credit despite his many faults and crimes. The fear of foreign invasion died away; the Danish attacks in 1075 and 1085 were utterly futile. Englishmen, while they hated William as the destroyer of their independence, could not forget ‘the good peace that he made in this land; so that a man of any account might fare over his kingdom unhurt with his bosom full of gold.’ To keep the peace in a land was no slight thing in those days of feudal anarchy; and if the Norman Conquest was very far from being an unmixed benefit, it at least brought about a better sense of unity than had hitherto prevailed in England.