re than English, they are European sanctuaries, two of
the greater sites of the history of Europe. Perhaps as much cannot
rightly be said for the hill where the town of Battle stands, the
landing-place at Pevensey and the port of Hastings.

And yet I don't know. What a different England it would have been if
William of Normandy had failed or had never landed here at all. And if
such an England could have endured how changed would have been the
whole destiny of Europe. I am not sure after all that we ought not to
be as uplifted by the memory of Hastings as we are or should be by the
memory of Caesar's advent. At any rate since Hastings was fought and
won in the eleventh century any national prejudices that belong wholly
to the modern world are quite as much out of place with regard to it as
they are with regard to Caesar or St Augustine. And if we must be
indignant and remember old injuries that as often as not were sheer
blessings, scarcely in disguise, let us reserve our hatred, scorn and
contempt for those damned pagan and pirate hordes that first from
Schleswig-Holstein and later from Denmark descended upon our Christian
country, and for a time overwhelmed us with their brutish barbarism.
As for me I am for the Duke of Normandy; without him England were not
the England of my heart.

Now the great and beautiful road up out of Hastings, seven miles into
Battle, is not only one of the loveliest in Britain, every yard of it
is full of Duke William's army, and thence we may see how in its
wonderful simplicity all that mighty business which was decided that
October morning on the hill-top that for so long Battle Abbey guarded
as a holy place, was accomplished. For looking southward over the
often steep escarpment, always between three and five hundred feet
over the sea plain, we may see Pevensey Castle, the landing, Hastings,
the port, and at last come to Battle, the scene of the fight that gave
England to the Norman for our enormous good and glory and honour.

I say that the struggle for the English crown between Duke William of
Normandy and Harold, King of England, was in no sense of the word a
national struggle; on the contrary, it was a personal question fought
and decided by the Duke of Normandy and his men, and Harold and his
men. Indeed the society of that time was altogether innocent of any
impulse which could be called national. That society, all of one piece
as it was, both in England and in Gaul, was wholly Fe