ame from Maine and Anjou, from Poitiers and Brittany, from France
and Flanders, from Aquitaine and Burgundy, from the Alps and the banks
of the Rhine. All the professional adventurers, all the military
vagabonds of Western Europe, hastened to Normandy by long marches; some
were knights and chiefs of war, the others simple foot-soldiers and
sergeants-of-arms, as they were then called; some demanded money-pay,
others only their passage, and all the booty they might win. Some asked
for land in England, a domain, a castle, a town; others simply required
some rich Saxon in marriage. Every thought, every desire of human
avarice presented itself. William rejected no one, says the Norman
chronicle, and satisfied every one as well as he could. He gave,
beforehand, a bishopric in England to a monk of Fescamp, in return for a
vessel and twenty armed men."[N] The Pope was William's chief supporter.
Harold and all his adherents were excommunicated, and William received a
banner and ring from Rome, the double emblem of military and
ecclesiastical investiture. Of the sixty thousand men that formed the
Norman army, Normans formed the smallest portion, and most of their
number were not of noble birth.

William sailed on the 28th of September, and landed his army on the
29th, without experiencing any resistance. Harold was in the North,
contending with and defeating the Northmen, one of whose leaders was his
brother Tostig. As soon as he received intelligence of William's landing
he marched south, bent upon giving immediate battle, though his mother
and his brother Gurth and other relatives, and many of his friends,
strongly counselled delay. This counsel was good, for his force was to
William's as one to four; and even a week's delay might have so far
strengthened the Saxons as to have enabled them to fight on an approach
to equal terms with the invaders. But Harold rejected all advice, and
pressed forward to action so imprudently as to countenance, in a
superstitious age, the notion that he was urged on by an irresistible
power, which had decreed his destruction. Certainly he did not display
much sagacity before battle, though both skill and bravery in it were
not wanting on his part The battle of Hastings was fought on the 14th of
October, 1066. The Normans were the assailants; but for six hours--from
nine in the morning till three in the afternoon--they were repulsed; and
had the Saxons been content to hold their ground, victory would