The Scandinavians were the first to land. Hardrada entered York, and for a moment it seemed as if victory would belong to the people of the North. But Harold of England rushed to meet them, and crushed them at Stamford-bridge; his brother, the rebel Tosti, fell on the field of battle, and Hardrada died of an arrow-wound in the throat. All was over with Scandinavia; there remained the Normans of France.
Who were these Normans? Very different from those of the other army, they no longer had anything Scandinavian or Germanic about them; and thus they stood a chance of furnishing the Anglo-Saxons with the graft they needed. Had it not been for this, their invasion would have carried no more important result than that of the Danes in the ninth century; but the consequences were to be very different. The fusion between Rollo's pirates, and the already dense population of the rich province called after them Normandy, had been long accomplished. It was less a fusion than an absorption, for the natives were much more numerous than the settlers. From the time of the second duke, French had again become the language of the mass of the inhabitants. They are Christians; they have French manners, chivalrous tastes, castles, convents, and schools; and the blood that flows in their veins is mostly French. Thus it is that they can set forth in the eleventh century for the conquest of England as representatives of the South, of Latin civilisation, of Romance letters, and of the religion of Rome. William comes blessed by the Pope, with a banner borne before him, the gift of Alexander II., wearing a hair of St. Peter's in a ring, having secured by a vow the favour of one of France's patrons, that same St. Martin of Tours, whose church Clovis had enriched, and whose cape Hugues Capet had worn: whence his surname.
No Beowulf, no northern hero is sung of in William's army; but there resound the verses of the most ancient masterpiece of French literature, at that time the most recent. According to the poet Wace, well informed, since his father took part in the expedition, the minstrel Taillefer rode before the soldiers, singing "of Charlemagne, and of Roland, and Oliver, and the vassals who fell at Roncevaux."[131]
The army, moreover, was not exclusively composed of men from Normandy.[132] It was divided into three parts; to the left the Bretons and Poictevins; the Normans in the centre; and to the right the French, properly so called. No doubt was possible; William's army was a French army; all contemporary writers describe it as such, and both parties give it that name. In the "Domesday Book," written by order of William, his people are termed "Franci"; on the Bayeux tapestry, embroidered soon after the Conquest, at the place where the battle is represented, the inscription runs: "Hic Franci pugnant" (Here fight the French). Crowned king of England, William continues to call his followers "Frenchmen."[133] The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, on the other side, describe the invaders sometimes as Normans and sometimes as Frenchmen, "Frenciscan." "And the French had possession of the place of carnage," says the Worcester annalist, after giving an account of the battle of Hastings; and he bestows the appellation of Normans upon the men of Harold Hardrada. A similar view is taken farther north. Formerly, we read in a saga, the same tongue was spoken in England and Norway, but not after the coming of William of Normandy, "because he was French."[134]
As to Duke William, he led his army of Frenchmen in French fashion, that is to say gaily. His state of mind is characterised not by any overflow of warlike joy or fury, but by good humour. Like the heroes of the Celtic poems, like the inhabitants of Gaul in all ages, he is prompt at repartee (argute loqui). He stumbles in stepping off the ship, which is considered by all as a bad omen: "It is a most fatal omen," we read in an ancient Scandinavian poem, "if thou stumble on thy feet when marching to battle, for evil fairies stand on either side of thee, wishing to see thee wounded."[135] It means nothing, said the duke to his followers, save that I take possession of the land. At the moment of battle he puts his hauberk on the wrong way: another bad omen. Not at all, he declares, it is a sign I shall turn out different; "King I shall be, who duke was":
Le nom qui ert de duchée
Verreiz de due en rei torné;
Reis serai qui duc ai esté.[136]
He challenges Harold to single combat, as the Gauls did their adversaries, according to Diodorus Siculus; and as Francis I. will do later when at feud with Charles V. He was to die in an expedition undertaken out of revenge for an epigram of the king of France, and to make good his retort.
The evening of the 14th of October, 1066, saw the fate of England decided. The issue of the battle was doubtful. William, by a series of ingenious ideas, secured the victory. His foes were the victims of his cleverness; they were "ingenio circumventi, ingenio victi."[137] He ordered his soldiers to simulate a flight; he made his archers shoot upwards, so that the arrows falling down among the Saxons wrought great havoc. One of them put out Harold's eye; the English chief fell by his standard, and soon after the battle was over, the most memorable ever won by an army of Frenchmen.
The duke had vowed to erect on the field of the fight an abbey to St. Martin of Tours. He kept his word, but the building never bore among men the name of the saint; it received and has retained to this day the appellation of "Battle." Its ruins, preserved with pious care, overlook the dales where the host of the Conqueror gathered for the attack. Far off through the hills, then covered by the yellowing leaves of the forest of Anderida, glistens, between earth and sky, the grey sea that brought over the Norman fleet eighteen centuries ago. Heaps of stones, overgrown with ivy, mark the place where Harold fell, the last king of English blood who ever sat upon the throne of Great Britain. It is a secluded spot; large cedars, alders, and a tree with white foliage form a curtain, and shut off from the outer world the scene of the terrible tragedy. A solemn silence reigns; nothing is visible through the branches, save the square tower of the church of Battle, and the only sound that floats upwards is that of the old clock striking the hours. Ivy and climbing roses cling to the grey stones and fall in light clusters along the low walls of the crypt; the roses shed their leaves, and the soft autumn breeze scatters the white petals on the grass, amidst fragments to which is attached one of the greatest memories in the history of humanity.
The consequences of "the Battle" were indeed immense, far more important than those of Agincourt or Austerlitz: a whole nation was transformed and became a new one. The vanquished Anglo-Saxons no more knew how to defend themselves and unite against the French than they had formerly known how to unite against the Danes. To the momentary enthusiasm that had gathered around Harold many energetic supporters succeeded a gloomy dejection. Real life exhibited the same contrasts as literature. Stirred by sudden impulses, the natives vainly struggled to free themselves, incapable even in this pressing danger of combined and vigorous action; then they mournfully submitted to fate. The only contemporary interpreter of their feelings known to us, the Anglo-Saxon chronicler, bewails the Conquest, but is more struck by the ravages it occasions than by the change of domination it brings about. "And Bishop Odo and Earl William [Fitz-Osbern]," he says, "remained here and wrought castles widely throughout the nation, and oppressed the poor people, and ever after that it greatly grew in evil. May the end be good when God will." So much for the material disaster, now for the coming of the foreigner: "And then came to meet him Archbishop Ealdred [of York], and Eadgar child and Earl Eadwine, and Earl Morkere, and all the best men of London, and then, from necessity, submitted when the greatest harm had been done, and it was very imprudent that it was not done earlier, as God would not better it for our sins."[138]