Battle of Hastings. Oct. 14.
Death of Harold.
On the 28th King William landed at Pevensey. Harold was still at York when the news reached him. He hastily gathered what troops he could round the nucleus of his own immediate followers who had been with him at Stamford Bridge. All the South of England joined him gladly, both from Wessex and East Anglia. But Edwin and Morkere, in their jealousy of the rival house, forgot their patriotism and Harold’s good deeds to themselves, and deserted him. With such an army as he had, Harold took up his position upon the hill of Senlac, where Battle Abbey now stands. This hill runs out from the North Sussex hills southward like a peninsula. There Harold erected palisades, and arranged his men with a view to defensive action only. This step was rendered necessary by the difference of the armies; the English fought all on foot, a large proportion were irregularly armed militia, and the hand javelin—not the bow and arrow—was their national missile. The Normans, on the other hand, fought as chivalry on horseback, and had many archers. Once in the plain Harold’s army might have been crushed by the charge of the mailed cavalry. But repeated charges uphill against an entrenched foe, stubborn and heavily armed, could not but wear out the mounted knight. Our descriptions are all from Norman sources, and the contrast between the religious Norman and the jovial Englishman is fully brought out. On the one side, the night is said to have been passed in prayer, and on the other in revelry. There were certainly, however, priests and monks upon the side of the English, and probably this story is a monkish exaggeration. Harold drew up his forces with his own picked troops upon the front of the hill, between the dragon banner of Wessex and his own banner adorned with a fighting man. The backward curves of the hill were occupied by his worse armed troops. He himself, with his brothers Gyrth and Leofwine, took their place beside the standard. The French advanced in three divisions,—the Bretons, under Alan, on the left; the Normans, under their Duke and his two brothers, Robert and Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, in the centre; the adventurers, under Roger of Montgomery, on the right. They galloped forward, preceded by Taillefer, a minstrel, tossing his sword aloft and singing songs of Charlemagne. But their efforts were vain. The heavy axe of the English hewed down man and horse if any reached the barricade, and the French had to draw back. The Bretons began the flight, and the Normans soon followed, but the English militia were not steady enough to withstand the excitement of victory. The veteran centre stood firm, but the troops opposed to the Bretons broke from their position in pursuit. William saw his advantage, rallied his troops, drove back the pursuers, and made a second vehement assault upon the barricade. The Earls Gyrth and Leofwine were killed, the barricade in part removed, but still Harold held his ground, and William had to have recourse to stratagem before he could secure a victory. His present comparative success had been caused by the accidental over-eagerness of the English. He determined to try whether he could not again induce them to break their line. The Normans turned in apparent flight, the English, heated by the long fight, rushed forward in pursuit. The Norman cavalry turned round and rode down their pursuers, and, driving them before them, again charged up the hill; while the archers, whose skill had been somewhat foiled by the shields of the English, were ordered to drop a flight of arrows upon the heads of Harold and his men. The plan was fatally successful; the battle was still stubbornly contested, though no longer in serried ranks, when Harold fell, pierced in the eye by an arrow. With him disappeared all hope of English success. His body was found, and buried under a cairn by the sea, till afterwards removed to his minster of Waltham.
[STATE OF SOCIETY]
449-1066
The Mark system.
The chief interest in the Conquest is the change that it is always said to have exercised in the character of the institutions of England. It used to be asserted that the feudal system was introduced, and completed as a wholly new system to the English, after the Conquest; and Hume speaks of the division of the kingdom into so many knights’ fiefs, into so many baronies, as if there were complete reorganization of the whole constitution. Modern inquiry tends to confirm what would naturally have been supposed, that the whole of the elements of the feudal system existed in England as in other Teutonic countries before the arrival of the Normans. The form which the civilization of the Scandinavian and Teutonic nations took seems to have been that of a collection of village communities, such as may be seen at work at present in India. The district occupied by such community was called the Mark, and was divided into three parts, in each of which every free member of the community had his share, but which were cultivated in strict accordance with the customary system of agriculture which no one might break. There was first the village, then the arable mark (cultivated land), then the common pasture, and beyond that the waste. Every freeman had a share in the arable and in the common pasture, but he was bound to sow the same crops as his neighbours, and to follow the same arrangement, which appears to have been simple and barbarous. The common fields, or mixed lands as they are called, were divided into three strips by broad grassy mounds; one was sown with autumn crops, one with spring crops, and the third left fallow. In the same way, though under somewhat varying rules, the grass mark was partitioned. Frequently all enclosures were removed at the close of the hay harvest, and the cattle grazed in common, as they were allowed to do also in the stubble of the arable mark. Lands were probably redistributed at certain intervals of time, and the power of devising hereditary property by will was strictly restrained. Traces of common fields cultivated on the threefold system, and of customary cultivation, are still to be found in England, and were plentiful in the last century.
German institutions.
Division of ranks.