The Tapestry shows us the fearful slaughter which took place on that hard-fought field. The border is filled with dead men and horses lying in every conceivable position; a head is not unfrequently deposited at some distance from the body to which it once belonged. We can scarcely look upon the drawing without being impressed with the idea that the designer of the Tapestry had been the witness of some fight. It is said that when a man receives a mortal wound, his body is thrown for the moment into violent spasmodic action. So much is this the case, that you may tell the effect of a death-bringing volley by noticing how many unhappy wretches make a sudden leap. In the Tapestry something of this spasmodic action is manifested, and some of the men are coming to the ground in such a posture as they could only do after having sprung up from it.[101]
The battle had now lasted the greater part of the day. “From nine o’clock in the morning till three in the afternoon the battle was up and down, this way and that, and no one knew who would conquer and win the land. Both sides stood so firm and fought so well that no one could guess which would prevail. The Norman archers with their bows shot thickly upon the English; but they covered themselves with their shields, so that the arrows could not reach their bodies.... Then the Normans determined to shoot their arrows upwards into the air, so that they might fall on their enemies’ heads and strike their faces. The archers adopted this scheme, and shot up into the air towards the English; and the arrows in falling struck their heads and faces, and put out the eyes of many, and all feared to open their eyes or leave their faces unguarded.” “The arrows now flew thicker than rain before the wind. Then it was that an arrow that had been thus shot upwards struck Harold above his right eye and put it out. In his agony he drew the arrow ([Plate XVI.]) and threw it away, breaking it with his hands; and the pain to his head was so great that he leaned upon his shield.” Still the English did not yield, and Harold, though grievously hurt, maintained his ground.
At length the device was adopted which put victory into the hands of the Normans. Harold, knowing William’s skill in strategy, exhorted his troops at the beginning of the fight to keep their ground, and not suffer themselves to be drawn into a pursuit. Had his troops been well-trained men, to whom obedience is a second nature, that battle had probably not been lost. Many of them however had been brought from the fields, and were unable to resist the prospect of inflicting deserved vengeance upon their adversaries. Harold’s troops were the more likely to fall into the snare laid for them, in consequence of the success which attended, in an earlier part of the day, the attack upon the pursuing Normans in the Malfosse.
William’s army fled by little and little, the English following them. “As the one fell back, the other pressed after; and when the Frenchmen retreated, the English thought and cried out that the men of France fled and would never return. ‘Cowards,’ said they, ‘you came hither in an evil hour, wanting our lands, and seeking to seize our property, fools that you were to come! Normandy is too far off, and you will not easily reach it ... your sons and daughters are lost to you!’ The Normans bore these taunts very quietly, as indeed they easily might, for they did not know what the English said.”
At length the time arrived for the assailants to come to a stand. The English had broken rank; the valley, too, had been crossed, and the Normans were now standing above the Saxons on the flank of the hill on the top of which they had formed in the morning.
At the word of command, Dex aie, the Normans halted, and turned their faces towards the enemy. Now commenced the fiercest part of that bloody day’s encounter. Neither party was wanting in courage. All the chroniclers do justice to the contending forces. “One hits, another misses; one flies, another pursues; one is aiming a stroke, while another discharges his blow. Norman strives with Englishman again, and aims his blows afresh. One flies, another pursues swiftly; the combatants are many, the plain wide, the battle and the melée fierce. On every hand they fight hard, the blows are heavy, and the struggle becomes fierce.”
As neither the horrors nor the gallantry exhibited on a battle-field can be comprehended by a general description, it may be well here to introduce an account of one or two of the individual encounters occurring at this period, with which Wace supplies us.
“The Normans were playing their part well, when an English knight came rushing up, having in his company a hundred men furnished with various arms. He wielded a northern hatchet, with the blade a full foot long; and was well armed after his manner, being tall, bold, and of noble carriage. In the front of the battle, where the Normans thronged most, he came bounding on swifter than a stag, many Normans falling before him and his company. He rushed straight upon a Norman, who was armed, and riding on a war-horse, and tried with a hatchet of steel to cleave his helmet; but the blow miscarried, and the sharp blade glanced down before the saddle-bow, driving through the horse’s neck down to the ground, so that both horse and master fell together to the earth. I know not whether the Englishman struck another blow; but the Normans who saw the stroke were astonished, and about to abandon the assault, when Roger de Montgomery came galloping up, with his lance set, and heeding not the long-handled axe which the Englishman wielded aloft, struck him down, and left him stretched upon the ground. Then Roger cried out ‘Frenchmen, strike; the day is ours!’ And again a fierce melée was to be seen, with many a blow of lance and sword; the English still defending themselves, killing the horses, and cleaving the shields.”
“There was a French soldier of noble mien, who sat his horse gallantly. He spied two Englishmen who were also carrying themselves boldly. They were both of them men of great worth, and had become companions in arms and fought together, the one protecting the other. They bore two long and broad bills, and did great mischief to the Normans, killing both horses and men. The French soldier looked at them and their bills, and was sore alarmed; for he was afraid of losing his good horse, the best that he had, and would willingly have turned to some other quarter, if it would not have looked like cowardice. Fearing the two bills, he raised his shield by the ‘enarmes,’ and struck one of the Englishmen with his lance on the breast, so that the iron passed out at the back. At the moment that he fell, the lance broke, and the Frenchman seized the mace that hung at his right side, and struck the other Englishman a blow that completely fractured his scull.”
The slaughter at this period of the day must have been fearful. The chronicler of Battle Abbey says, “Amid these miseries there was exhibited a fearful spectacle: the fields were covered with dead bodies, and on every hand nothing was to be seen but the red hue of blood. The dales around sent forth a gory stream, which increased at a distance to the size of a river! How great think you must have been the slaughter of the conquered, when the conquerors’ is reported, upon the lowest computation, to have exceeded ten thousand? Oh how vast a flood of human gore was poured out in that place where these unfortunates fell and were slain! What a dashing to pieces of arms, what a clashing of strokes; what shrieks of dying men; what grief; what sighs were heard! How many groans; how many bitter notes of direst calamity then sounded forth, who can rightly calculate! What a wretched exhibition of human misery was there to call forth astonishment! In the very contemplation of it our heart fails us.”[102]