FLIGHT OF THE ENGLISH CHURLS.
Bayeux Tapestry.
Thus fell Harold, in his prime, for he was but forty-four years of age. It happened long, long ago; but although much else has turned to dry-as-dust in that vast interval, and although many historical figures and the deeds they wrought are mere vacuities, emptinesses, and parchment-like bogles, the heroic death of Harold in defence of his country still calls up bitter sorrow in those of us to whom history is not merely the printed page, or a glass-covered case in a museum.
When Harold fell England fell with him. All who fought with him that day knew it must be so, yet the fight, although it was by now a hopeless cause, went on until the evening deepened into night; and although those of meaner estate may have fled when the fortunes of the day were obviously lost, those of higher sort plied their axes to the death. Few of them escaped, or sought to do so. Yet, even as the last streaks of waning day faded into night the defeated and fleeing English turned once more upon their foes, and in the marshy hollow in the rear of the battle-ground, then eloquently called “Malfosse,” slew in great numbers the Norman horsemen who incautiously pursued them. It was the last expiring effort of the day, but so sturdy an one that the Normans were for awhile stricken again with a temporary panic, thinking that English reinforcements had arrived. But no fresh troops were come to save that situation; and not even at this last moment had the northern Earls, Edwin and Morcar, sent aid to redeem their characters. They live in history in company with Judas and many another perjured traitor. By their treachery England was lost.
XLIII
The battle was over, after more than nine hours’ continued fighting; and now William’s tent was pitched upon the spot where the English standard had been planted. There he supped, and there, amid the thousands of dead and dying, he slept. On the morrow the mutilated body of Harold was found; but neither the bribes nor the entreaties of his aged mother, Gytha, who had now lost all her sons in battle, could induce William to yield it to her or any other. The perjurer, the excommunicate, he swore, should not have religious sepulture. Harold’s body should rest in unhallowed ground, beneath a cairn of stones on the rocks of Hastings, and should thus in death guard the Saxon shore he had guarded in life. And so to the shore at Hastings, wrapped in a purple robe, his body was borne. And truly, no other burial could be so fitting for the hero whose life was given for his trust. The Duke of Normandy was no sentimentalist, and to the minds of that age unconsecrated interment was a thing to be thought of only with a shudder; but he was chivalrously poetic here, without a suspicion of it himself, for no hero was ever laid in more fitting place than Harold, by the salt selvedge of the coast he had sworn to protect, and did protect to his last moment: and as for consecration—why, there be those who dare to think that the laying there of this man’s body, who shed his life-blood for the land that gave him birth, was itself hallowing and consecration transcendent for that rocky marge.
But the epic fitness of Harold’s resting-place was not perceived by that age, or was thought a thing of lesser moment than that he should be accorded religious burial; and thus it happened that, when the fury of the Conqueror’s first rage had died down, permission was accorded for Harold’s body to be translated to Waltham Abbey, the great minster himself had founded in Essex. The last days of the terrible year of 1066 were drawing in when that re-interment took place, and Sussex lost the bones of her patriot.
This is pre-eminently the era of national memorials, when heroes of to-day and of yesterday and other personages whom we are not all agreed to call heroes are honoured in effigies of bronze. ’Tis but yester-year since Alfred the Great was duly, and properly, commemorated in this shape, in his city of Winchester, and a statue of William of Orange—our William the Third—was erected, not so long since, on the spot where he landed, at Brixham, in Tor Bay; but Harold yet awaits his turn. For the why of it, I know not; unless indeed it be that we English are ever a thought too practical, and honour, not so much endeavour, as success. Alfred was successful; Harold in the end was crushed, and his England broken. Yet it was not himself was lacking; it was his rash irregulars, who, by their headlong zeal, lost him the day. He strove his utmost, and that utmost was, beyond rivalry, noble.
To say, “He did his best,” is the noblest epitaph we can give any man, and none should grudge Harold posthumous honour. We “Englishmen,” as we may still call ourselves, are not yet so indisputably the masters of the world that we can afford to disregard our national heroes, and Harold’s statue, of appropriate heroic size, surely should stand prominently over Hastings, to show newer generations how we can honour even endeavour that has won to no position, and that we can remember even our defeated heroes.