And yet Mr. Oman, now, is not ashamed to write:

I fear that I must plead that I was never converted. This being so, Mr. Round cannot prove that I was.[83]

What is the explanation of Mr. Oman’s statement? Simply that he has again changed his view; and having first adopted that of Mr. Freeman, and then abandoned it to adopt my own, he now, in turn, abandons both, and advances a third (or fourth) at variance with both alike! His Norman knights are still “surging”; but they “surge” against an obstacle which has once more changed its character:

The knights, if unsupported by the bowmen, might have surged for ever against the impregnable breastworks. The archers, unsupported by the knights, could easily have been driven off the field by a general charge. United by the skilful hand of William, they were invincible (‘History of the Art of War,’ p. 164).

What then were these “impregnable breastworks” which now make their appearance in our old familiar passage? They are described on page 154, where we read that “we must not think ... of massive palisading:[84] they were merely

wattled hurdles ... intended, perhaps, more as a cover against missiles than as a solid protection against the horsemen, for they can have been but hastily constructed things, put together in a few hours by wearied men.”

Let us place, side by side, Mr. Oman’s own words in this his latest work:

The knights, if unsupported by the bowmen, might have surged for ever against the impregnable breastworks (p. 164).[The English defences] constituted no impregnable fortress, but a slight earthwork, not wholly impassable to horsemen (p. 154).

That they were, to say the least, “not wholly impassable” is evident from the writer’s own description (p. 159) of the Norman knights’ first charge “against the long front of the breastworks, which, in many places, they must have swept down by their mere impetus.” Nay, “before the two armies met hand to hand,” as Mr. Freeman observes,[85] a single horseman—“a minstrel named Taillefer,” as Mr. Oman terms him—“burst right through the breastwork and into the English line” (p. 158).[86] Such, on Mr. Oman’s own showing, were his so-called “impregnable breastworks” (p. 164). A single horseman could ride through them!

We see then that, in this his latest work, he not only adopts yet another view, but cannot adopt it consistently even when he does.