selves boldly and skilfully for battle. We have then six compartments, each exhibiting some scene of the terrible conflict. The seventy-first shows us the death of Harold. The tapestry abruptly ends with the figures of flying soldiers.*

Knight's Old England, p. 83.

THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS.

On the ground which afterward bore, and still bears, the name of Battle, the Anglo-Saxon lines occupied a long chain of hills, fortified with a rampart of stakes and osier hurdles. In the night of the 13th of October, William announced to the Normans that the next day would be the day of battle. The priests and monks, who had followed the invading army in great numbers, being attracted, like the soldiers, by the hope of booty, assembled together to offer up prayers and sing litanies, while the fighting men were preparing their arms. The soldiery employed the time which remained to them after this first care in confessing their sins and receiving the sacrament. In the other army the night was passed in quite a different manner; the Saxons diverted themselves with great noise, and sung their old national songs, around their watchfires, while they emptied the horns of beer and of wine.

In the morning the Bishop of Bayeux, who was a son of William's mother, celebrated mass in the Norman camp, and gave a blessing to the soldiers; he was armed with a hauberk under his pontifical habit: he then mounted a large white horse, took a baton of command in his hand, and drew up the cavalry into line.† The army was divided into three columns of attack: in the first were the soldiers from the county of Boulogne and from Ponthieu, with most of the adventurers who had engaged personally for pay; the second comprised the auxiliaries from Brittany, Maine, and Poitou; William himself commanded the third, composed of the

*When Napoleon was preparing to invade England, he caused this invaluable record to be removed from Bayeux to the national museum at Paris, where it was exhibited to revive the recollection of the conquest by William of Normandy.

Having arrived at a hill called Hechelande, situated in the direction of Hastings, while they were helping one another on with their armour, there was brought forth a coat of mail for the duke to put on, and, by accident, it was handed to him the wrong side foremost. Those who stood by and saw this cursed it as an unfortunate omen; but the duke's sewer again bade them be of good cheer, and declared that this also was a token of good fortune-namely, that those things which had before kept their ground were about fully to submit themselves to him. The duke, perfectly unmoved, put on the mail with a placid countenance, and uttered these memorable words:-"I know, my dearest friends, that if I had any confidence in omens I ought on no account to go to the battle to-day; but, committing myself trustfully to my Creator in every matter, I have given no heed to omens; neither have I ever loved sorcerers. Wherefore, now, secure of His aid, and in order to strengthen the hands and courage of you, who, for my sake, are about to engage in this conflict, I make a vow, that upon this place of battle I will found a suitable free monastery, for the salvation of you all, and especially of those who fall; and this I will do in honour of God and his saints, to the end that the servants of God may be succoured; that even as I shall be enabled to acquire for myself a propitious asylum, so it may be freely, offered to all my followers."

Chronicle of Battel Abbey.

Norman chivalry. At the head and on the flanks of each division marched several ranks of light-armed infantry, clad in quilte cassocks, and carrying long bows, or arbalets of steel. The duke mounted a Spanish charger, which a rich Norman had brought him when he returned from a pilgrimage to St. James of Compostella, in Galicia. From his neck were suspended the most venerated of the relics on which Harold had sworn; and the standard, consecrated by the pope, was carried at his side by a young man, named Toustain-le-Blanc. At the moment when the troops were about to advance, the duke, raising his voice, thus addressed them :

"Remember to fight well, and put all to death; for if we conquer we shall all be rich. What I gain, you will gain; if I conquer, you will conquer; if I take this land, you shall have it. Know, however, that I am not come here only to obtain my right, but also to avenge our whole nation for the felonies, perjuries, and treacheries of these English. They put to death the Danes, men and women, on St. Brice's night. They decimated the companions of my kinsman, Alfred, and took his life. Come on, then; and let us, with God's help, chastise them for all these misdeeds."

The army was soon within sight of the Saxon camp, to the north-west of Hastings. The priests and monks then detached themselves from it, and ascended a neighbouring height to pray, and to witness the conflict. A Norman, named Taillefer, spurred his horse forward in front, and began the song-famous throughout Gaul-of the exploits of Charlemagne and Roland. As he sung, he played with his sword, throwing it up with force in the air, and receiving it again in his right hand. The Normans joined in chorus, or cried, "God be our help! God be our help!"

As soon as they came within bowshot, the archers let fly their arrows, and the cross-bow men their bolts; but most of the shots were deadened by the high parapet of the Saxon redoubts. The infantry, armed with spears, and the cavalry then advanced to the entrances of the redoubts, and endeavoured to force them. The Anglo-Saxons, all on foot around their standard planted in the ground, and forming behind their redoubts one compact and solid mass, received the assailants with heavy blows of their battle-axes, which, with a back-stroke, broke their spears, and clove their coats of mail. The Normans, unable either to penetrate the redoubts or to tear up the palisades, and fatigued with their unsuccessful attack, fell back upon the division commanded by William. The duke then commanded all his archers again to advance, and ordered them not to shoot point-blank, but to discharge their arrows upwards, so that they might fall beyond the rampart of the enemy's camp. Many of the English were wounded, chiefly in the face, in consequence of this manoeuvre; Harold himself lost an eye by an arrow, but he nevertheless continued to command and to fight. The close attack of the foot and horse recommenced to the cry of "Notre Dame! Dieu aide! Dieu aide!" But the Normans were repulsed at one entrance of the Saxon Camp, as far

as a great ravine covered with grass and brambles, in which, their horses stumbling, they fell, pell-mell, and numbers of them perished. There was now a momentary panic in the army of the invaders: it was rumoured that the duke was killed, and at this news they began to fly. William threw himself before the fugitives and barred their passage, threatening them, and striking them with a lance; then, uncovering his head, "Here I am," he exclaimed; "look at me; I live, and, with God's help, I will conquer."

The horsemen returned to the redoubts; but, as before, they could neither force the entrance nor make a breach. The duke then bethought himself of a stratagem to draw the English out of their position, and make them quit their ranks. He ordered a thousand horse to advance and immediately take to flight. At the sight of this feigned rout the Saxons were thrown off their guard, and all set off in pursuit, with their axes suspended from their necks. At a certain distance a body of troops, posted there for the purpose, joined the fugitives, who then turned round; and the English, surprised in the midst of their disorder, were assailed on all sides with spears and swords, which they could not ward off, both hands being occupied in wielding their heavy axes. When they had lost their ranks the gates of the redoubts were forced, and horse and foot entered together; but the combat was still warmly maintained, pell-mell, and hand to hand. William had his horse killed under him. King Harold and his two brothers fell dead at the foot of their standard, which was plucked from the ground, and the banner sent from Rome planted in its stead. The remains of the English army, without a chief and without a standard, prolonged the struggle until the close of day, so that the combatants on each side could recognise one another only by their language.

Having (says an old historian) rendered all which they owed to their country, the remnant of Harold's companions dispersed, and many died on the roads, in consequence of their wounds and the day's fatigue. The Norman horse pursued them without relaxation, and gave quarter to no one. They passed the night on the field of battle, and on the morrow, at dawn of day, Duke William drew up his troops, and had all the men who had followed him across the sea called over from the roll which had been prepared before his departure from the port of St. Valery. Of these, a vast number, dead and dying, lay beside the vanquished on the field. The fortunate survivors had, as the first profits of their victory, the spoils of the dead. In turning over the bodies there were found thirteen wearing under their armour the monastic habit these were the Abbot of Hida and his twelve companions; the name of their monastery was the first inscribed in the "Black Book" of the conquerors.

The Normans, according to Rapin, lost six thousand men, and the English above sixty thousand. Hume says the Normans lost nearly fifteen thousand, which, as a fourth of William's army did not answer to the muster roll the morning after the battle, is probably the truest estimate.

The mothers and the wives of those who had repaired to the field of battle from the neighbouring country to die with the king, came to the field to seek for and to bury the bodies of their sons and husbands. The body of King Harold remained for some time on the battle-field, and no one dared ask for it. At length Godwin's widow, named Githa, overcoming her anguish, sent a message to Duke William, demanding his permission to perform the last rites in honour of her son. She offered, say the Norman historians, to give him the weight of her son's body in gold. But the duke refused harshly, saying that the man who had belied his faith and his religion should have no sepulture but the sands of the shore. He, however, eventually became milder, if we may believe an old tradition on this score, in favour of the monks of Waltham-an abbey founded and enriched in his lifetime by Harold. Twe Saxon monks, Osgod and Ailrik, deputed by the Abbot of Waltham, made request and obtained leave to transport to their church the sad remains of its benefactor. They then proceeded to the heap of slain that had been spoiled of armour and of vestments, and examined them carefully one after another, but he whom they sought for had been so much disfigured by wounds that they could not recognise it. Sorrowing, and despairing of succeeding in their search by themselves, they applied to a woman whom Harold, before he was king, had kept as his mistress, and entreated her to assist them. She was called Edith, and poetically surnamed the Swan-necked. She consented to follow the two monks, and succeeded better than they had done in discovering the corpse of him whom she had loved.

These events are all related by the chroniclers of the AngloSaxon race in a tone of dejection which it is difficult to transfuse. They call the day of the battle a day of bitterness, a day of death, a day stained with the blood of the brave. "England, what shall I say of thee?" exclaims the historian of the church of Ely; "what shall I say of thee to our descendants? That thou hast lost thy national king, and hast fallen under the domination of foreigners; that thy sons have perished miserably; that thy councillors and thy chieftains are vanquished, slain, or disinherited!" Long after the day of this fatal conflict, patriotic superstition be lieved that the fresh traces of blood were still to be seen on the ground where the battle was. These traces were said to be visible on the heights to the north-west of Hastings whenever a little rain moistened the soil. The conqueror, immediately upon gaining the victory, made a vow to erect on this ground a convent, dedicated to the Holy Trinity and to St. Martin, the patron of the soldiers of Gaul. Soon afterwards, when his good fortune permitted him to fulfil this vow, the great altar of the monastery was placed on the spot where the Saxon standard of King Harold had been planted and torn down. The circuit of the exterior walls

The redness of the water here, and at many other places in the neighbourhood, is caused by the oxidozation of the iron which abounds in the soil of the weald of Sussex. Chronicle of Battel Abbey.

was traced so as to enclose all the hill which the bravest of the English had covered with their bodies. All the circumjacent land, a league wide, on which the different scenes of the battle had been acted, became the property of this abbey, which, in the Norman language, was called l'Abbaye de la Bataille, or Battel Abbey. Monks from the great convent of Marmoutiers, near Tours, came to establish here their domicile, and they prayed for the repose of the souls of all the combatants who perished on that fatal day.

It is said that, when the first stones of the edifice were laid, the architects discovered that there would certainly be a want of water. Being disconcerted, they carried this disagreeable news to William. "Work, work away," replied the conqueror jocularly; "if God grant me life, there shall be more wine for the monks of Battel to drink than there now is clear water in the best convent in Christendom." Thierry's History, p. 68.

REIGN OF THE CONQUEROR.

FROM 1066 TO 1087-20 YEARS, 10 MONTHS, 25 DAYS.
THE CONQUEROR'S COURTSHIP.

"Duke William of Normandy," says William of Jumièges, "having learned that Baldwin, Earl of Flanders, had a daughter named Matilda, very beautiful in person, and of a generous disposition, sent deputies, by the advice of his peers, to ask her of her father in marriage, who gladly consented, and gave her a large portion." Seven long years, however, of stormy debate intervened before the courtship of William of Normandy was brought to this happy conclusion. Contemporary chroniclers, indeed, afford us reason to suspect that the subsequent conquest of England proved a less difficult achievement to the valiant duke than the wooing and winning of Matilda of Flanders. He had to contend against the opposition of the Courts of France and Burgundy, the intrigues of his rival kinsmen of the race of Rollo, the objections of the Church, and, worse than all, the reluctance and disdain of the lady. The chronicler, Ingerius, declares "that William was so infuriated by the scorn with which Matilda treated him, that he waylaid her in the streets of Bruges, as she was returning with her ladies from mass, beat her, rolled her in the mud, spoiled her rich array, and then rode off at full speed." This teutonic mode of courtship, aocording to the above authority, brought the matter to a favourable crisis; for Matilda, being convinced of the strength of William's passion by the violence of his behaviour, or afraid of encountering a second beating, consented to become his wife. A different version of this strange episode in the royal wooing is given by Baudoin d'Avesnes, who shows that the provocation which the Duke William had received from his fair cousin was not merely a rejection of his matrimonial overtures, but an insulting allusion to the defect in his birth. According to this writer, the Earl of Flanders