The Commune of London, and other studies

by John Horace Round

So great was the press when the hostile masses [phalanges] met and strove against each other, that the bodies of the slain could not fall to the ground, but the dead stood upright wedged among the living.

For precisely the same phenomenon is described at the Battle of Hastings. William of Poitiers says of the English:

Ob nimiam densitatem eorum labi vix potuerunt interfecti.

And Bishop Guy:

Spiritibus nequeunt frustrata cadavera sterni,

Nec cedunt vivis corpora militibus.

Omne cadaver enim, vita licet evacuatum,

Stat velut illæsum, possidet atque locum.[75]

There is nothing strange in this parallel between Zülpich and Hastings, for Mr. Oman observes that:

In their weapons and their manner of fighting, the bands of Angles, Jutes, and Saxons who overran Britain were more nearly similar to the Franks than to the German tribes who wandered south.[76]