Coming to a description of the night before the battle, he tells us, in the original Latin in which he wrote: “Angli, ut accepimus, totam noctem insomnem cantibus potibusque ducentes.” That is to say, in plain English, they kept awake all night, singing, and drinking innumerable drinks—which is a very fine, fearless way of preparing to meet the foe, and one highly expressive of contempt for him; but it is not a wise way.
He then proceeds to expand his argument by saying: “The vices attendant on drunkenness which enervate the human mind followed; hence it arose that, engaging William more with rashness and precipitate fury than military skill, they doomed themselves and their country to slavery by one, and that an easy, victory.”
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The Normans spent the night after a very different fashion—in prayer and in the confession of their sins—for they knew that many must fall on that eventful day. The Bishops of Coutances and Bayeux received their confessions, and recorded their vows on this Friday night that if they were spared on the morrow they would fast on Saturdays for the remainder of their lives. William, for his part, registered a solemn vow that if he gained the victory he would found a great church on the battlefield, in gratitude for the divine aid. The Normans, in short, made all due preparation; and as they prayed well, so did they fight, on that fatal morrow.
Another, and a highly picturesque, chronicler tells us delightfully of the alleged actual Saxon debauch on the battlefield, on the night before the fray. This account is by Wace, the author of several romances and narrative-poems in Norman-French. Wace wrote his jingling metrical narrative about 1170, more than a hundred years after the battle was fought, but probably incorporated the floating traditions of that great occasion, doubtless still plentiful in his time.
Here is his picture of the Saxon orgies:
Quant la bataille dut joster,
La nuit avant, ço oï conter,
Furent Engleiz forment haitiez,
Mult riant è mult enveisiez;