Not a shaft was discharged.
Meanwhile, the Norman infantry, who had been before recoiling, no sooner saw their Duke (whom they recognised by his steed and equipment) fall on the ground, than, setting up a shout—“The Duke is dead!” they fairly turned round, and fled fast in disorder.
The fortune of the day was now well-nigh turned in favour of the Saxons; and the confusion of the Normans, as the cry of “The Duke is dead!” reached, and circled round, the host, would have been irrecoverable, had Harold possessed a cavalry fit to press the advantage gained, or had not William himself rushed into the midst of the fugitives, throwing his helmet back on his neck, showing his face, all animated with fierce valour and disdainful wrath, while he cried aloud:
“I live, ye varlets! Behold the face of a chief who never yet forgave coward! Ay, tremble more at me than at yon English, doomed and accursed as they be! Ye Normans, ye! I blush for you!” and striking the foremost in the retreat with the flat of his sword, chiding, stimulating, threatening, promising in a breath, he succeeded in staying the flight, reforming the lines, and dispelling the general panic. Then, as he joined his own chosen knights, and surveyed the field, he beheld an opening which the advanced position of the Saxon vanguard had left, and by which his knights might gain the entrenchments. He mused a moment, his face still bare, and brightening, as he mused. Looking round him, he saw Mallet de Graville, who had remounted, and said, shortly:
“Pardex, dear knight, we thought you already with St. Michael!—joy, that you live yet to be an English earl. Look you, ride to Fitzosborne with the signal-word, ‘Li Hardiz passent avant!’ Off, and quick.”
De Graville bowed, and darted across the plain.
“Now, my Quens and chevaliers,” said William, gaily, as he closed his helmet, and took from his squire another spear; “now, I shall give ye the day’s great pastime. Pass the word, Sire de Tancarville, to every horseman—‘Charge!—to the Standard!’”
The word passed, the steeds bounded, and the whole force of William’s knighthood, scouring the plain to the rear of the Saxon vanguard, made for the entrenchments.
At that sight, Harold, divining the object, and seeing this new and more urgent demand on his presence, halted the battalions over which he had presided, and, yielding the command to Leofwine, once more briefly but strenuously enjoined the troops to heed well their leaders, and on no account to break the wedge, in the form of which lay their whole strength, both against the cavalry and the greater number of the foe. Then mounting his horse, and attended only by Haco, he spurred across the plain, in the opposite direction to that taken by the Normans. In doing so, he was forced to make a considerable circuit towards the rear of the entrenchment, and the farm, with its watchful groups, came in sight. He distinguished the garbs of the women, and Haco said to him,—
“There wait the wives, to welcome the living victors.”