n the Norman host had crossed the sea and William, who
had anchored on the twenty-eighth of September off Pevensey, was ravaging
the coast to bring his rival to an engagement. His merciless ravages
succeeded in drawing Harold from London to the south; but the King wisely
refused to attack with the troops he had hastily summoned to his banner.
If he was forced to give battle, he resolved to give it on ground he had
himself chosen, and advancing near enough to the coast to check William's
ravages he entrenched himself on a hill known afterwards as that of
Senlac, a low spur of the Sussex downs near Hastings. His position
covered London and drove William to concentrate his forces. With a host
subsisting by pillage, to concentrate is to starve; and no alternative
was left to the Duke but a decisive victory or ruin.

[Sidenote: Battle of Hastings]

On the fourteenth of October William led his men at dawn along the higher
ground that leads from Hastings to the battle-field which Harold had
chosen. From the mound of Telham the Normans saw the host of the English
gathered thickly behind a rough trench and a stockade on the height of
Senlac. Marshy ground covered their right; on the left, the most exposed
part of the position, the hus-carls or body-guard of Harold, men in full
armour and wielding huge axes, were grouped round the Golden Dragon of
Wessex and the Standard of the King. The rest of the ground was covered
by thick masses of half-armed rustics who had flocked at Harold's summons
to the fight with the stranger. It was against the centre of this
formidable position that William arrayed his Norman knighthood, while the
mercenary forces he had gathered in France and Britanny were ordered to
attack its flanks. A general charge of the Norman foot opened the battle;
in front rode the minstrel Taillefer, tossing his sword in the air and
catching it again while he chaunted the song of Roland. He was the first
of the host who struck a blow, and he was the first to fall. The charge
broke vainly on the stout stockade behind which the English warriors
plied axe and javelin with fierce cries of "Out, out," and the repulse of
the Norman footmen was followed by a repulse of the Norman horse. Again
and again the Duke rallied and led them to the fatal stockade. All the
fury of fight that glowed in his Norseman's blood, all the headlong
valour that spurred him over the slopes of Val-es-dunes, mingled that day
with the coolness of head,