If, in spite of the above evidence, it should still be pretended by anyone that the plain meaning of Mr Freeman's words is not their meaning, I will refer them not to my own interpretation, but to that of Mr Freeman's friend and colleague, the Rev W. Hunt, who wrote in the historian's lifetime, 'at his request' and by his 'invitation', and whose proofs were revised by Mr Freeman himself.[50] This is Mr Hunt's version:
Set in close array behind a palisade forming a kind of fortification, shoulder to shoulder and shield to shield, the army of Harold presented a steady and immovable front to the Norman attack ... Fatal was the national formation of the English battle, when men stood in the closest order, forming a wall with their shields. While no mode of array could be stronger so long as the line remained unbroken it made it hard to form the line again.[51]
So, again, in his life of Harold:
All the heavy-armed force fought in close order, shield touching shield, so as to present a complete wall to the enemy.[52]
Here we have no tortuous imaginings, but, in plain and straightforward words, 'what historians in general evidently mean' when they speak of a 'shield-wall', what it meant to Mr Freeman, what it means to Mr Hunt, and it is admitted, to myself.[53] Such was the English shield-wall, according to Mr Freeman, at 'Senlac'; it was what Mr Archer definitely declares it cannot possibly have been.
Lastly, as to the ground on which Mr Archer pronounces impossible a continuous shield-wall[54] —namely, that the English could not have fought in such close order,[55] and that the axe-men being 'shieldless ... could not have formed the shield-wall'; one need only confront him with Mr Freeman's words.
| Mr Freeman | Mr Archer |
|---|---|
| Referring to the mode of fighting of an English army in that age, and to 'the usual tactics of the shield-wall', Mr Freeman wrote of 'the close array of the battle-axe men' (p. 444). He had already written of 'the English house carls with their ... huge battle-axes', accustomed to fight in 'the close array to the shield-wall.'[56] 'They still formed their shield-wall and fought with their great axes.'[57] | It is enough for me that common sense, the tapestry, Wace,[58] our Italian chronicler, and his later Old French translator all show that the English axe-men could not or did not form the shield-wall (English Historical Review, ix. p. 14). Possibly they [the house carls] may have formed a genuine shield-wall; but while forming it they cannot have been using the 'bipennis', or the two-handed axe (Ibid., p. 20, note). |
I am compelled to repeat what I said in the Quarterly Review.
We almost hesitate to waste our own and our readers' time on a writer who, professing to vindicate Mr Freeman's view as against us, devotes his energies to proving that view to be utterly absurd.[59]