Notwithstanding the horrors of the scene, and the hopelessness of their efforts, the courage of the Saxons failed not; sometimes fleeing, and sometimes making a stand, they slaughtered their pursuers in heaps.
The place where this havoc took place is probably the southern front of the eminence on which Battle Abbey was afterwards placed. The whole site of the contest has sometimes been denominated “Sanguelac,” or the “Lake of Blood,” but this designation properly belongs to that part in which the street of the modern town of Battle called “the Lake” is situated. Until a very recent period this place was supposed still occasionally to reek with human gore. “Thereabout,” says Drayton, “is a place which after rain always looks red, which some have attributed to a very bloody sweat of the earth, as crying to heaven for revenge for so great a slaughter.”
“ ... Asten once distained with native English blood;
Whose soil, when wet with any little rain,
Doth blush, as put in mind of those there sadly slain.”
The truth is “the redness of the water here, and at many other places in the neighbourhood, is caused by the oxydation of the iron which abounds in the soil of the Weald of Sussex.”[103]
To return to the battle, “Loud was now the clamour, and great the slaughter; many a soul then quitted the body which it inhabited. The living marched over the heaps of dead, and each side was weary of striking. He charged on who could, and he who could no longer strike still pushed forward. The strong struggled with the strong; some failed, others triumphed; the cowards fell back, the brave pressed on; and sad was his fate who fell in the midst, for he had little chance of rising again; and many in truth fell who never rose at all, being crushed under the throng. And now the Normans pressed on so far that at last they reached the English standard.” The Tapestry represents the eager advance of a body of horsemen. The compartment is inscribed, HIC FRANCI PUGNANT ET CECIDERUNT QUI ERANT CUM HAROLDO—Here the French are fighting, and have slain the men who were with Harold. “There Harold had remained, defending himself to the utmost; but he was sorely wounded in the eye by the arrow, and suffered grievous pain by the blow. An armed man came in the throng of the battle, and struck him on the ventaille of his helmet and beat him to the ground; and as he sought to recover himself, a knight beat him down again, striking him on the thick of his thigh, down to the bone.” This is shown in the Tapestry ([Plate XVI.]) Harold first of all appears standing by his standard, contending with a horseman who is making a rush at him; then he is shown pulling the arrow out of his eye; and lastly he is seen, falling—
“With his back to the field, and his feet to the foe,”
—his battle axe has dropped from his nerveless grasp, and a Norman,
