break down the palisade. But the English hurled their javelins at them as they came up, and cut them down with their axes when they came near enough for hand-strokes. The Normans shouted, "God help us!" the English shouted, "God Almighty!" and the king's own war-cry of "Holy Cross" the Holy Cross of Waltham. William's heavyarmed foot pressed on along the whole line, the native Normans having to face King Harold's chosen troops in the center. The attack was vain; they were beaten back, and they could not break down the palisade. Then the horsemen themselves, the duke at their head, pressed on up the hillside. But all was in vain; the English kept their strong ground; the Normans had to fall back; the Bretons on the left actually turned and fled. Then the worse-armed and less-disciplined English troops could not withstand the temptation to come down from the hill and chase them. The whole line of the Norman army began to waver, and in many parts to give way. A tale spread that the duke was killed. William showed himself to his troops, and, with his words, looks, and blows, helped by his brother, the bishop, he brought them back to the fight. The flying Bretons now took heart; they turned and cut in pieces the English who were chasing them. Thus far the resistance of the English had been thoroughly successful, wherever they had obeyed the king's orders, and kept within their defenses. But the fault of those who had gone down to follow the enemy had weakened the line of defense, and had shown the Normans the true way of winning the day.

Now came the fiercest struggle of the whole day. The duke and his immediate following tried to break their way into the English inclosure at the very point where the king stood by his standard with his brothers. The two rivals were near coming face to face. At that moment Earl Gyrth hurled his spear, which missed the duke, but killed his horse and brought his rider to the ground. William then pressed

to the barricade on foot, and slew Gyrth in hand-to-hand fight. At the same time the king's other brother, Earl Leofwine, was killed. The duke mounted another horse, and again pressed on; but the barricade and the shield-wall withstood all attempts. On the right the attack of the French division had been more lucky; the palisade was partly broken down, But the English, with their axes and shields, still kept their ground, and the Normans were still unable to gain the top of the hill or to come near the standard.

The battle had now gone on for several hours, and Duke William saw that, unless he quite changed his tactics, he had no hope of overcoming the resistance of the English. They had suffered a great loss in the death of the two earls, and their defenses were weakened at some points; but the army, as a whole, held its ground as firmly as ever. William then tried a most dangerous stratagem, his taking to which shows how little hope he now had of gaining the day by any direct attack. He saw that his only way was to bring the English down from the hill, as part of them had already come down. He, therefore, bade his men feign flight. The Normans obeyed; the whole host seemed to be flying. The irregular levies of the English on the right again broke their line; they ran down the hill, and left the part where its ascent was most easy open to the invaders. The Normans now turned on their pursuers, put most of them to flight, and were able to ride up the part of the hill which was left undefended, seemingly about three o'clock in the afternoon. The English had thus lost the advantage of the ground; they had now, on foot, with only the bulwark of their shields, to withstand the horsemen. This, however, they still did for some hours longer. But the advantage was now on the Norman side, and the battle changed into a series of single combats. The great object of the Normans was to cut their way to the standard, where King Harold still fought. Many men were killed in the attempt; the resistance of the

English grew slacker, but yet,

when evening was coming on, they still fought on with their king at their head, and a new device of the duke's was needed to bring the battle to an end.

This new device was to bid his archers shoot in the air, that their arrows might fall, as he said, like bolts from heaven. They were, of course, bidden specially to aim at those who fought around the standard. Meanwhile twenty knights bound themselves to lower or bear off the standard itself. The archers shot; the knights pressed on; and one arrow had the deadliest effect of all; it pierced the right eye of King Harold. He sank down by the standard; most of the twenty knights were killed, but four reached the king while he still breathed, slew him with many wounds, and carried off the two ensigns. It was now evening; but though the king was dead, the fight still went on. Of the king's own chosen troops it would seem that not a man either fled or was taken prisoner. All died at their posts, save a few wounded men who were cast aside as dead, but found strength to get away on the morrow. But the irregular levies fled, some of them on the horses of the slain men. Yet even in this last moment they knew how to revenge themselves on their conquerors. The Normans, ignorant of the country, pursued in the dark. The English were thus able to draw them to the dangerous place behind the hill, where not a few Normans were slain. But the duke himself came back to the hill, pitched his tent there, held his midnight feast, and watched there with his host all night.

X.

THE CONQUEROR AND HIS POLICY.-GREEN.

[Although the great victory at Senlac did not put William in possession of the whole country, it, nevertheless, decided the fate of England. He advanced upon the capital and, two months after the battle, was elected and crowned as king. Even then he was in real possession of only a third of the kingdom. But he met, henceforth, with no general, organized resistance. Revolts here and there were easily crushed, and gradually his authority was extended over the whole land. In three years the Conquest was complete. It was not a conquest in the ordinary sense. It was not the complete subjugation of one people by another people. The Norman duke had taken the place of the English king, and he had taken it by force; but he presented himself to the conquered nation as its legitimate ruler. The ultimate results of the change were almost incalculable, but the immediate results were few. The old laws and customs were preserved, and the continuity of English history remained unbroken.]

IT is to the stern discipline of our foreign kings that we owe not merely English wealth and English freedom, but England herself. And of these foreign masters the greatest was William of Normandy. In William the wild impulses of the Northman's blood mingled strangely with the cool temper of the modern statesman. As he was the last, so he was the most terrible outcome of the northern race. The very spirit of the sea-robbers, from whom he sprang, seemed embodied in his gigantic form, his enormous strength, his savage countenance, his desperate bravery, the fury of his wrath, the ruthlessness of his revenge. "No knight under heaven," his enemies owned," was William's peer." Boy as he was at Val-ès-dunes, horse and man went down before his lance. All the fierce gayety of his nature broke out in the warfare of his youth. No man could bend William's bow. His mace crashed its way through a ring of English warriors to the foot of the standard. He rose to his greatest height at moments when other men despaired. His voice rang out as a trumpet when his soldiers fled before the English charge

at Senlac, and his rally turned the flight into a means of victory. In his winter march on Chester he strode at the head of his fainting troops, and helped with his own hand to clear a road through the snow-drifts. And with the Northman's daring broke out the Northman's pitilessness. When the townsmen of Alençon hung raw hides along their walls, in scorn of the "tanner's" grandson, William tore out his prisoners' eyes, hewed off their hands and feet, and flung them into the town. Hundreds of Hampshire men were driven from their homes to make him a hunting-ground, and his harrying of Northumbria left Northern England a desolate waste. Of men's love or hate he recked little. His grim look, his pride, his silence, his wild outbursts of passion, left William lonely even in his court. His subjects trembled as he passed. "Stark man he was," writes the English chronicler," and great awe men had of him." His very wrath was solitary. "To no man spake he, and no man dared speak to him," when the news reached him of Harold's seizure of the throne. It was only when he passed from his palace to the loneliness of the woods that the king's temper unbent. "He loved the wild deer as though he had been their father."

It was the genius of William which lifted him out of this mere Northman into a great general and a great statesman. The wary strategy of his French campaigns, the organization of his attack upon England, the victory of Senlac, the quick resource, the steady perseverance which achieved the Conquest, showed the wide range of his generalship. His political ability had shown itself from the first moment of his accession to the ducal throne. William had the instinct of government. He had hardly reached manhood when Normandy lay peaceful at his feet. Revolt was crushed; discord was trampled under foot. The Duke "could never love a robber," be he baron or knave. The sternness of his temper stamped itself throughout upon his rule. "Stark he was to men that withstood him," says the chronicler of his English system