Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II - Charlotte Yonge 8 стр.

If I succeed, he said, I shall be under the fewer obligations.

When he requested aid from Matildas brother Baldwin, Count of Flanders, the answer he received was a query, how much land in England he would allot as a recompense. He sent, in return, a piece of blank parchment; but others say, that instead of being an absolute blank, it contained his signature, and was filled up by Baldwin, with the promise of a pension of three hundred marks.

Everything was at length in readiness; nine hundred ships, or rather large open boats, were assembled at the mouth of the Dive; lesser barks came in continually, and counts, barons, and knights, led in their trains of horsemen and archers.

All Williams friends were round him, and his two half-brothers, the sons of Arlette, Robert, Count of Eu, and Odo, the warlike Bishop of Bayeux. Matilda was to govern in his absence, and his eldest son, Robert, a boy of thirteen, was brought forward, and received the homage of the vassals, in order that he might be owned as heir of Normandy, in case any mishap should befall his father on the expedition.

Nothing delayed the enterprise but adverse winds, and these prevailed so long that the feudal army had nearly exhausted their forty days stock of provisions; knight and man-at-arms murmured, and the Duke was continually going to pray in the Church of St. Valery, looking up at the weathercock every time he came out.

On the eve of St. Michael, the Dukes anxious face became cheerful, for a favorable wind had set in, and the word was given to embark. Horses were led into the ships, the shields hung round the gunwale, and the warriors crowded in, the Duke, in his own Mora, leading the way, the Popes banner at his masts head, and a lantern at the stern to guide the rest.

By morning, however, he outstripped all the fleet, and the sailor at the mast-head could see not one; but gradually first one sail, then another, came in sight, and by the evening of Michaelmas-day, 1066, the whole nine hundred were bearing, down upon Pevensey.

Those adverse winds had done Willium more favor than he guessed, for they had delayed him till Harold had been obliged to quit his post of observation in Sussex, and go to oppose the Northmen at York, and thus there was no one to interfere with the landing of the Normans, who disembarked as peacefully at Pevensey as if it had been Rouen itself.

William was almost the first to leap on shore; but as he did so, his foot slipped, and he fell. Rising, with his hands full of mud, he called out, Here have I taken possession of the land which by Gods help I hope to win! Catching his humor, one of his knights tore a handful of thatch from a neighboring cottage, and put it into his hand, saying, Sir, I give you seizin of this place, and promise that I shall see you lord of it before a month is past.

The troops were landed first, then the horses, and lastly the carpenters, who set up at once three wooden forts, which had been brought in the ships prepared to be put together. After dinner, William ordered all the ships to be burnt, to cut off all hope of return. He continued for several days at Pevensey, exercising the troops: and viewing the country. In one of these expeditions, he gave, what was thought, a remarkable proof of strength; for on a hot day, as they were mounting a steep hill, Fitzosborn grew faint and exhausted by the weight of his ponderous iron hawberk. The Duke bade him take it off, and putting it on over his own, climbed the hill and returned to his camp wearing both at once.

His landing, though he saw no one, had in reality been watched by a South-Saxon Thane, who, having counted Ins ships and seen his array, mounted, and, without resting day or night, rode to York, where, as Harold was dining, two days after the battle of Stamford Bridge, he rushed into the hall, crying out, The Normans are come! they have built a fort at Pevensey!

No time was to be lost, and at the dawn Harold and all his army were marching southward, sending a summons to the thanes and franklins of each county as he passed, to gather to the defence of the country.

His speed was too great, however, for the great mass of the people to be able to join him, even if they had been so minded, and they were for the most part disposed to take no part in the struggle, following the example of the young Earls of Mercia, Edwin and Morkar, who held aloof, unwilling alike to join Harold or the Normans.

When Harold reached London, his army was so much lessened by fatigue and desertion, that his mother, Gytha, and his two youngest brothers, Gyrtha and Leofwyn, advised him not to risk a battle, but to lay the country waste before the Normans, and starve them out of England. Harold answered, with the generous spirit that had been defaced and clouded by his ambition, Would you have me ruin my kingdom? By my faith, it were treason. I will rather try the chances of a battle with such men as I have, and trust to my own valor and the goodness of my cause.

Yet, said Gyrtha, if it be so, forbear thyself to fight. Either willingly or under force, thou art sworn to Duke William. Thine oath will weigh down thine arm in battle, but we, who are all unpledged, are free to fight in defence of our realm. Thou wilt aid us if we are defeated, avenge us if we are slain.

Harold disregarded this advice, and was resolved to lead the host himself; he gathered his followers from Kent and Wessex, and marched southward.

CAMEO VII. THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS. (1066.)

The first night after leaving London, Harold slept at Waltham Abbey, and had much conference with the Abbot, who was his friend, and appointed two Monks, named Osgood and Ailric, to attend him closely in the coming battle.

On the 12th of October, Harold found himself seven miles from the enemy, and halted his men on Heathfield-hill, near Hastings, the most advantageous ground he could find.

On the highest point he planted his standard bearing the figure of a man in armor, and marshalling his Saxons round it, commanded them to entrench themselves within a rampart and ditch, and to plant within them a sort of poles, on the upper part of which, nearly the height of a man from the ground, they interwove a fence of wattled branches, so that while the front rank might pass under to man the rampart, the rear might be sheltered from the arrows of the enemy.

These orders given, Harold and Gyrtha rode together to a hill, whence they beheld the Norman camp, when for a moment Harold was so alarmed at the number of their tents that he spoke of returning to London and acting as his mother had advised; but Gyrtha showed him that it was too late; he could not turn back from the very face of the enemy, without being supposed to fly, and thus yielding his kingdom at once.

Three Saxons presently came to the brothers who had been seized as spies by the Normans, and, by order of William, led throughout his camp, and then sent away to report what they had seen. Their story was that the Norman soldiers were all Priests, at which Harold laughed, since they had been deceived by the short-cut locks and smooth chins of the Normans, such as in England were only worn by ecclesiastics, warriors always wearing flowing locks and thick moustaches.

Several messages passed between the two camps, William sending offers of honors and wealth to Harold and Gyrtha if they would cease their resistance; but when all were rejected, he sent another herald to defy Harold as a perjured traitor under the ban of the Church;a declaration which so startled the Saxons, that it took strong efforts on the part of the gallant Gyrtha to inspirit them to stand by his brother.

This over, William addressed his soldiers from a little hillock, and put on his armor, hanging-round his neck, as a witness of Harolds falsehood, one of the relics on which the oath had been taken. He chanced to put on his hawberk with the wrong side before, and seeing some of his men disconcerted, fancying this a token of ill, he told them that it boded that his dukedom should be turned to a kingdom.

This over, William addressed his soldiers from a little hillock, and put on his armor, hanging-round his neck, as a witness of Harolds falsehood, one of the relics on which the oath had been taken. He chanced to put on his hawberk with the wrong side before, and seeing some of his men disconcerted, fancying this a token of ill, he told them that it boded that his dukedom should be turned to a kingdom.

His horse was a beautiful Spanish barb sent him by the King of Castile; and so gallantly did he ride, that there was a shout of delight from his men, and a cry, Never was such a Knight under Heaven! A fair Count he is, and a fair king he will be! Shame on him who fails him!

William held in his hand the Popes banner, and called for the standard-bearer of Normandy; but no one liked to take the charge, fearful of being hindered from gaining distinction by feats of personal prowess. Each elder knight of fame begged to be excused, and at last it was committed to Tunstan the White, a young man probably so called because he had yet to win an achievement for his spotless shield.

The army was in three troops, each drawn up in the form of a wedge, the archers forming the point; and the reserve of horse was committed to Bishop Odo, who rode up and down among the men, a hawberk over his rochet and a club in his hand.

On went the Normans in the light of the rising sun of the 13th of October, Taillefer, a minstrel-knight, riding first, playing on his harp and singing the war-song of Roland the Paladin. At seven oclock they were before the Saxon camp, and Fitzosborn and the body under his command dashed up the hill, under a cloud of arrows, shouting, Notre Dame! Dieu aide! while the Saxons within, crying out, Holy Rood! cut down with their battle-axes all who gained the rampart, and at length drove them back again.

A second onset was equally unsuccessful, and William, observing that the wattled fence protected the Saxons from the arrows, ordered the archers to shoot their arrows no longer point blank, but into the sky, so that they might fall on the heads of the Saxons. Thus directed, these shafts harassed the defenders grievously; and Harold himself was pierced in the left eye, and almost disabled from further exertion in the command.

Yet at noon, the Normans had been baffled at every quarter, and William, growing desperate, led a party to attack the entrance of the camp. Again he was repulsed, and driven back on some rough ground, where many horses fell, and among them his own Spanish charger. A cry arose that the Duke was slain; the Normans fled, the Saxons broke out of their camp in pursuit, when William, throwing off his helmet and striking with his lance, recalled his troops, shouting, Look at me! I live, and by Gods grace I will conquer. All the Saxons who had left the camp were slain, their short battle-axes being unfit to cope with the heavy swords and long lances of their enemies; and taught by this success, William caused some of his troops to feign a flight, draw them beyond the rampart, turn on them, and cut them down. The manoeuvre was repeated at different parts of the camp till the rampart was stripped of defenders, and the Normans forced their way into it, cut down the wattled fence, and gave admittance to the host of horse and foot who rushed over the outworks.

Yet still the standard floated in the midst of a brave band who

All who came near that close-serried ring of steadfast Saxon strength were cut down, and the piles of dead Normans round them were becoming ramparts, when twenty knights bound themselves by an oath that the standard should be taken, spurred their horses against the ranks, and by main force, with the loss of ten of their number, forced an opening. Ere the ranks could close, William and his whole force were charging into the gap made for a moment, trampling down the brave men, slaughtering on all sides, yet still unable to break through to the standard.

Man by man the noble Saxons were hewn down as the Normans cut their way through them, no more able to drive them back than if they had been the trees of the forest. Gyrtha, the true-hearted and noble, fell under the sword of a Norman knight, Leofwyn lay near him in his blood, yet still Harolds voice was heard cheering on his men, and still his standard streamed above their heads.

At sunset, that well-known voice was no longer heard, and the setting sun beheld Tunstan the White perform the crowning achievement of the day, uproot the standard banner of Normandy that the morning beams had seen committed to his charge. Not an earl or thane of Wessex was living; and heaps of slain lay thick on Heathfield hill, and the valley round a very lake of blood. Senlac, or Sanglac, was its old name, and sounded but too appropriate to the French ears of the Conqueror, as, in a moment of sorrow for the fearful loss of life he beheld, he vowed that here should stand an Abbey where prayer should be made for pardon for his sins and for the repose of the souls of the slaughtered. Darkness came on; but the Saxons, retreating under its cover, were still so undaunted that the Normans could hardly venture to move about the field except in considerable parties, and Eustace of Boulogne, while speaking to the Duke, was felled to the earth by a sudden blow.

In the morning, Gytha, the widow of Godwin, who had lost four children by the perjury and ambition of one of them, came to entreat permission to bury. Gyrtha and Leofwyn lay near together at the foot of the banner. Harold was sought in vain, till Edith of the Swan neck, a lady he had loved, was brought to help in the melancholy quest.

She declared a defaced and mangled corpse to be that of Harold, and it was carried, with those of the two brothers, to the Abbey of Waltham, where it was placed beneath a stone bearing the two sorrowful words, Infelix Harold.

Years passed on, and the people had long become accustomed to the Norman yoke, when there was much talk among them of a hermit, who dwelt in a cell not far from the town, in the utmost penitence and humility. He was seldom seen, his face was deeply scarred, and he had lost his left eye, and nothing was known of his name or history; but he was deeply revered for his sanctity, and when Henry Beauclerc once visited Chester, he sought a private interview with the mysterious penitent.

It is said, that when the hermit lay on his death-bed, he owned himself to be Harold, son of Godwin, once King of England for seven months. He had been borne from the bloody hill, between life and death, in the darkness of the evening, by the two faithful monks, Osgood and Ailric, and tended in secret till he recovered from his wounds.

Since that time he had been living in penitence and contrition, unknown to and apart from the world, and died at length, trusting that his forty years repentance might be accepted.

If this tale be true, what a warning might not he have bestowed on the young prince Henry, destined to run a like course of perjury and ambition, and to feel it turn back upon him in the dreariness of desolate old age, when he never smiled again. Had not the penitent Harold more peace at the last than the king Henry?

The same story is told of almost every king missed in a lost battle.

Arthur, borne away to die at Avalon, and believed to be among the fairies; Rodrigo, the last of the Goths, whose steed Orelio and horned helmet lay on the banks of the river, and whose name was found centuries after on a rude gravestone, near a hermitage; James IV., whom the Scots by turns hoped to see return from pilgrimage, and pitied as they looked at Lord Homes border tower; the gallant Don Sebastian, the last of the glorious race of Portuguese Kings, never seen after his shout of Let us die! in the tumult of Alcaçer, yet long looked for by his loving peopleof each in turn the belief has arisen among the subjects who clung to the hope of seeing the beloved prince, and dwelt on the doubt whether his corpse was identified. In the cases of Harold and Rodrigogenerous men tempted into fearful and ruinous crimesone would hope the tale was true, and that the time for repentance was vouchsafed to them; nor are their stories entirely without authority.