72
73
74
The next three panels are bringing the battle to an end. “Here,” says the inscription, “the French fight and slay those who were with Harold.” The number of armorial shields, and their presence even, on the Saxon side is noteworthy, and the reappearance of the round shield with the boss in the border; further, that the archers have at last got home, is indicated in the arrows that have struck the shields, and in the full quivers of the border. The stripping of the bodies of the slain by the camp followers is equally indicative of the stage the fight has reached; and in the next panel (the [74th]) you have one of the last episodes, the death of Harold himself. Harold is introduced twice: first, standing near his standard pulling from his face the arrow that has struck it; next, cut down by a mounted horseman, who strikes him on the thigh with his sword. That exactly follows Wace point for point, for his poem tells us first that Harold was struck in the eye by an arrow and that he pulled it out, and that then one came, a knight, who struck him on the thigh with a sword, wounding him to the bone; that at the same moment the standard fell to earth, and that the men “then killed Harold.”
75
