Chapter XVI: Part II: Historical Studies (2)

It was Mr Freeman's initial error in thus materializing a metaphor (through misconstruing his Latin) that first led me to doubt the existence of the 'palisade'. His champion, Mr Archer, in his first article,[18] was ominously silent as to this error: in the second, he had to confess of this passage, the first of Mr Freeman's proofs, that he himself 'should never think of using it to prove a palisade'.[19] _Exit_, therefore, Henry of Huntingdon.

(2) _Wace_

Two passages, and two alone, are in question--

(A) ll. 6991-4, which Mr Freeman has paraphrased thus:

WACE MR FREEMAN

Heraut a le lieu esgarde, He occupied the hill; he
Closre le fist de boen fosse, surrounded it on all its
De treis parz laissa treis entrees accessible sides by a palisade,
Qu'il a garder a commandees. with a triple gate of entrance,
and defended it to the south by
an artificial ditch (iii. 447).

My criticism on this has been from the first that Wace here speaks _only_ of a ditch, and that Mr Freeman has not only introduced here the alleged palisade, from which Wace's 'fosse' was quite distinct, but has also transferred to that palisade the 'treis entrees' of the fosse. That Mr Freeman did treat the 'palisade' and the 'fosse' as distinct and considerably apart is proved by this passage:

The Normans had crossed the [_sic_] English fosse, and were
now at the foot of the hill with the palisades and the axes
right before them (iii. 476).

The 'fosse' is that 'artificial ditch' of which Mr Freeman speaks in the above passage, the only one of which he does speak. Therefore, that 'artificial ditch' was, in his view, down in the valley to the south, and had nothing to do with that 'palisade' which he placed on the hill. There is thus no possible doubt as to Mr Freeman's view. On his own showing, the above lines make no mention of a palisade on the hill.[20]

(B) ll. 7815-26: The passage in question runs thus:

Fet orent devant els _escuz_
De fenestres è d'altres fuz,
Devant els les orent levez,
Come cleies joinz è serrez;
Fait en orent devant closture,
N'i laissierent nule jointure,
Par onc Normant entr'els venist
Qui desconfire les volsist.
D'escuz e d'ais s'avironoent,
Issi deffendre se quidoent
Et s'il se fussent bien tenu,
Ia ne fussent le ior vencu.

In his first edition, writing, I believe, under the influence of Taylor's version, Mr Freeman gave these lines in a footnote to his narrative of the battle, and appears to have then looked on them as describing his palisade.[21] But in his 'second edition, revised', in preparing which he went 'minutely through every line, and corrected or improved whatever seemed to need correction or improvement' (p. v), he transferred these lines to his appendix on the battle, where he wrote concerning them as follows:

[(At Maldon) the English stood, _as at Senlac_, in the array
common to them and their enemies--a strong line, or rather
wedge, of infantry, forming a wall with their shields (i.
271).][22]

Of the array of the shield-wall we have often heard already,
as at Maldon (see vol. i. p. 271), but it is at Senlac that we
get the fullest descriptions of it [_sic_] all the better for
coming in the mouths of enemies. Wace gives his description,
12941:

'Fet orent devant els escuz
De fenestres è d'altres fuz;
Devant els les orent levez.
. . . . .
Et s'il se fussent bien tenu
Ja ne fussent li jor vencu.'

So William of Malmesbury, 241. 'Pedites omnes cum bipennibus,
conserta ante se scutorum testudine, impenetrabilem cuneum
faciunt; quod profecto illis eâ die saluti fuisset,
nisi Normanni simulatâ fugâ more suo confertos manipulos
laxassent.' So at the battle of the Standard, according to
Æthelred of Rievaux (343), 'scutis scuta junguntur, lateribus
latera conseruntur' (iii. 763-4).

The unquestionable meaning of Mr Freeman's words is that Wace's lines (like the other passages) describe the time-honoured shield-wall, 'the fortress of shields, so often sung of alike in English and in Scandinavian minstrelsy' (iii. 372).

Appealing to this, his own verdict, in my original article,[23] I spoke of these lines as referring to the 'shield-wall', and maintained that 'escuz' meant shields, not 'barricades'. This also, it will be seen, must have been Mr Freeman's view, when he pronounced these lines to be a description of the shield-wall. I therefore declared that the only evidence he adduced for his palisade had been demonstrably obtained by misconstruing his Latin, and (on his own showing) by mistranslating his French.

This has been my case from the first: it remains my case now.

Unlike our forefathers on the hill of battle, I will not be decoyed into breaking 'the line of the shield-wall'.[24]

MY ARGUMENT AGAINST IT

In order to show clearly that I adhere to my original position, I need only reprint my argument as it appeared in the _Quarterly Review_.

It is clear that if he (Mr Freeman) found it needful, in his
story of the great battle, to mention this barricade about
a score of times, it must have occupied a prominent place in
every contemporary narrative. And yet we assert without fear
of contradiction that (dismissing the 'Roman de Rou') in no
chronicle or poem, among all Mr Freeman's authorities, could
he find any ground for this singular delusion; while the
Bayeux Tapestry itself, which he rightly places at their
head, will be searched in vain for a palisade, or for
anything faintly resembling it, from beginning to end of the
battle.[25]

On this passage we take our stand: it is the very essence of
our case. We made our statement 'without fear of contradiction';
and it is not contradicted. Moreover, we can now further
strengthen it by appealing to Baudri's poem,[26] an authority of
the first rank, in which, as in the others, there is no allusion
to the existence of any 'palisade'.

It will be observed that, in this passage, we expressly excluded
Wace's poem. We did so because--although, as we have seen, Mr
Freeman failed to produce from it any proof of a palisade--we
preferred to leave it an open question whether Wace did or did
not believe the English to have fought behind a palisade. In
rebutting Mr Freeman's evidence, that question did not arise.

There is another argument that we refrained from bringing
forward because we thought it superfluous. The Normans, of
course, as Mr Freeman reminds us, magnified the odds against
them: 'Nothing but the special favour of God could have given
his servants a victory over their enemies, which was truly
miraculous' (p. 440). William of Poitiers, he adds (p. 479),
sets forth their difficulties in detail:--

'Angli nimium adjuvantur superioris loci opportunitate, quem
sine procursu tenent, et maxime conferti; atque ingenti quoque
numerositate suâ atque validissimâ corpulentiâ; præterea
pugnæ instrumentis, quæ facile per scuta vel alia tegmina viam
inveniunt.'

Now William who was not only a contemporary writer, but, says
Mr Freeman (p. 757), 'understood' the site, had, obviously,
every inducement to include, among the difficulties of the
Normans, that special 'development', which according to
Mr Freeman (pp. 444, 468), 'the foresight of Harold' had
introduced on this occasion, and which, he assures us,
involved 'a frightful slaughter' of the Normans. And yet this
writer is absolutely silent, both here and throughout the
battle, as to the existence of a barricade of any sort or
kind.[27]

Here I would briefly refer to certain misrepresentations. Mr Archer claimed, in his original article (_Cont. Rev._, 344) to 'mainly rely' upon Wace, on the ground that I did so myself. I was obliged to describe this statement at once as 'the exact converse of the truth'.[28] For it will be seen, I expressly excluded Wace from the authorities on whom I relied, and specially rested my case, from the first, on the evidence of the Bayeux Tapestry. It is much to be regretted that Mr Archer has deliberately repeated his statement,[29] though even his ally reluctantly admits that it was 'not very happily worded'.[30]

Mr Archer might well seek to avoid the Bayeux Tapestry, for its evidence is dead against him, and he cannot explain it away. His first attempt was a brief allusion, accepting its authority without question, but suggesting that it might represent that part of the line where the barricade was absent.[31] Of this suggestion I at once disposed by showing that it is 'not only absolutely without foundation, but is directly opposed to Mr Freeman's theory, and, indeed, to his express statements'.[32] Forced to drop this explanation, my opponent, in his next article, fell back on the desperate device of repudiating the authority of the Tapestry,[33] 'the most authentic record' of the battle according to the late Professor, who was never weary of insisting on its 'paramount importance'. On my showing, beyond the possibility of question, that this amounted to rejecting everything that Mr Freeman had written on the subject,[34] Mr Archer once more shifts his tactics, and now writes thus:

If any fact in Hastings is more certain than another, it
is that at the beginning of the battle the main body of
the English was posted _on a hill_. Now 'the priceless
record'--the Bayeux Tapestry--represents them _on a plain_. If
the Tapestry could leave out this central feature--the hill of
Senlac--from its picture of the _opening_ battle, still more
easily could it leave out the intricate barriers upon the
hill.[35]

This _ad captandum_ argument is disposed of as easily as the others. The Tapestry does not concern itself with landscape, and shows us neither a hill nor a plain. It could not, on a narrow strip, show us 'the hill of Senlac', but it could--and would--show us the alleged palisade. For not only does it strive under every difficulty to represent such objects as churches, castles and houses, but it faithfully shows us the 'palisade'[36] raised by William at Hastings itself. And if it be urged that it could not depict men fighting behind such a defence, let us turn to the scene at Dinan. If we compare it with the opening scene of the great battle itself, we see precisely similar horsemen advancing to the attack, similar infantry resisting that attack, and similar spears flying between them. But at Dinan the defenders have a palisade, and on the hill of battle they have not.[37]

But although the evidence of the Bayeux Tapestry, Mr Freeman's own supreme authority, remains absolutely unshaken, it must not be supposed that I rely on that evidence alone. I attach as much importance as ever--and so will, I think, all prejudiced persons--to the other portion of my argument, that if there had been a barricade playing so important a part in the battle that Mr Freeman found it needful to mention it at least a score of times, it is practically inconceivable that all the authorities I enumerate should have absolutely ignored its existence. Judging from Mr Freeman's own experience, it would be simply impossible to describe the battle without mentioning the 'palisade'.

It is very significant that when we turn to a real feature of the English line, namely its close array, we find the above authorities as unanimous in mentioning the fact as they are in ignoring that 'curious defence',[38] those 'intricate barriers', as Mr Archer terms them, 'upon the hill'.[39]

The fight has raged so fiercely around this 'palisade' that I have been obliged to discuss it at somewhat disproportionate length. But to sum up, we have now seen, firstly, that the alleged palisade was a new 'development', and needs, as such, special proof of its existence; secondly, that of Mr Freeman's proofs, one at least must admittedly be abandoned, while he himself has impugned the other;[40] thirdly, that the evidence, both positive and presumptive, is altogether opposed to the existence of a palisade. In the narrative of the battle we shall find Mr Freeman interpolating the alleged defence solely from his own imagination, such references proving, on inquiry, to be imaginary and imaginary alone.[41]

THE SHIELD-WALL

It is a pleasure to find myself here in complete agreement with Mr Freeman. In his very latest study of the battle Mr Freeman wrote as follows:

The English clave to the old Teutonic tactics. They fought on
foot in the close array of the shield-wall.[42]

Mr Archer says they cannot have done so.[43] There was also, according to Mr Freeman, a barricade, in front of--and distinct from--the shield-wall, being a special development which, he tells us, 'the foresight of Harold' had introduced on this occasion (pp. 444, 468). The barricade is denied by me, the shield-wall by Mr Archer. Whichever of us is right, Mr Freeman's accuracy is, in either case, equally impugned.

It is essential to remember that Mr Freeman, throughout, treated the palisade and the shield-wall as _separate and distinct_. Thus he wrote so late as 1880:

Besides the palisade the front ranks made a kind of inner
defence with their shields, called the shield-wall. The Norman
writers were specially struck with the close array of the
English.[44]

So in his great work we read of 'the shield-wall _and the_ triple palisade still unbroken' (iii. 467). Later still 'the shield-wall still stood _behind the_ palisade' (p. 487). Even when 'the English palisade was gone _the English shield-wall_ was still a formidable hindrance in the way of the assailants (p. 491). The array of the shield-wall was still kept, though now without the help of the barricades' (p. 491). Here we have the very phrase of note NN, 'the array of the shield-wall',[45] and it is shown beyond question that Mr Freeman's shield-wall, whatever Mr Archer may pretend, was quite distinct from the palisade, and was a shield-wall 'pure and simple'.

Let it also be clearly understood what Mr Freeman meant by that 'array of the shield-wall', of which the disputed passage in Wace was, he held, a description. He shows us the whole English army 'ranged so closely together in the thick array of the shield-wall, that while they only kept their ground the success of an assailant was hopeless'.[46] He describes them as, 'a strong line, or rather wedge, of infantry, forming a wall with their shields',[47] and he ascribes their defeat to their 'breaking the line of the shield-wall'.[48]

Of this shield-wall my opponent rashly wrote:

The Reviewer's [_sic_] theory of an extended shield-wall
vanishes like smoke. If Wace is any authority ... the question
is settled once and for all. There was no extended shield-wall
at Hastings.[49]

Of course, 'the Reviewer's theory' here is no other than Mr Freeman's own.

If, in spite of the above evidence, it should still be pretended by anyone that the plain meaning of Mr Freeman's words is not their meaning, I will refer them not to my own interpretation, but to that of Mr Freeman's friend and colleague, the Rev W. Hunt, who wrote in the historian's lifetime, 'at his request' and by his 'invitation', and whose proofs were revised by Mr Freeman himself.[50] This is Mr Hunt's version:

Set in close array behind a palisade forming a kind of
fortification, _shoulder to shoulder and shield to shield_,
the army of Harold presented a steady and immovable front to
the Norman attack ... Fatal was the national formation of the
English battle, when _men stood in the closest order, forming
a wall with their shields_. While no mode of array could be
stronger so long as the line remained unbroken it made it hard
to form the line again.[51]

So, again, in his life of Harold:

All the heavy-armed force fought in close order, _shield
touching shield_, so as to present a complete wall to the
enemy.[52]

Here we have no tortuous imaginings, but, in plain and straightforward words, 'what historians in general evidently mean' when they speak of a 'shield-wall', what it meant to Mr Freeman, what it means to Mr Hunt, and it is admitted, to myself.[53] Such was the English shield-wall, according to Mr Freeman, at 'Senlac'; it was what Mr Archer definitely declares it cannot possibly have been.

Lastly, as to the ground on which Mr Archer pronounces impossible a continuous shield-wall[54]--namely, that the English could not have fought in such close order,[55] and that the axe-men being 'shieldless ... could not have formed the shield-wall'; one need only confront him with Mr Freeman's words.

MR FREEMAN MR ARCHER

Referring to the mode of fighting It is enough for me that common
of an English army in that age, sense, the tapestry, Wace,[58]
and to 'the usual tactics of the our Italian chronicler, and his
shield-wall', Mr Freeman wrote of later Old French translator all
'the close array of the show that the English axe-men
battle-axe men' (p. 444). He had could not or did not form the
already written of 'the English shield-wall (_English
house carls with their ... huge Historical Review_, ix. p. 14).
battle-axes', accustomed to Possibly they [the house carls]
fight in 'the close array to the may have formed a genuine
shield-wall.'[56] shield-wall; but while forming
it they cannot have been _using_
'They still formed their the 'bipennis', or the two-handed
shield-wall and fought with axe (_Ibid._, p. 20, note).
their great axes.'[57]

I am compelled to repeat what I said in the _Quarterly Review_.

We almost hesitate to waste our own and our readers' time on
a writer who, professing to vindicate Mr Freeman's view as
against us, devotes his energies to proving that view to be
utterly absurd.[59]

Nor will Mr Archer derive comfort from 'our only English "specialist" on mediaeval warfare';[60] who holds, as I had pointed out, that 'the English axemen' did fight 'arranged in a compact mass'.[61]

It is significant that the fact Mr Archer so confidently rejects is precisely that on which I am at one with Mr Freeman, Mr Hunt, and Mr Oman, and to which the original authorities bear witness with peculiar unanimity. Thus William of Poitiers, an authority of the first rank, describes the English as 'maxime conferti', speaks of their 'nimia densitas', and proceeds to dwell on the terrible effect of their weapon, the famous battle-axe. William of Malmesbury tells us that the axemen 'impenetrabilem cuneum faciunt'. Even Mr Archer's authority, Wace, writes of these warriors:

A pie furent _serrement_.

Baudri describes the English as 'consertos',[62] and the _Brevis Relatio_ as 'spissum agmen'. Bishop Guy writes of the 'spissum nemus Angligenarum', and styles them 'densissima turba'; Henry of Huntingdon, we saw, tells us that they were arranged 'in una acie strictissime', and were thus 'impenetrabiles Normannis'.

No feature of the great battle is more absolutely beyond dispute. It was the denseness of the English ranks that most vividly struck their foes. 'Shield to shield, and shoulder to shoulder', as Æthelred describes them at the Battle of the Standard, they wedged themselves together so tightly that the wounded could not move, nor even the corpses drop. And so they stood together, the living and the dead.[63]

And we must remember that this mass of men was 'ranged so closely together in the thick array _of the shield-wall_, that while they only kept their ground the success of an assailant was hopeless'.[64] The Conqueror saw, Mr Freeman reminds us, 'that his only chance was to tempt the English to break their shield-wall'.[65] I need not insist on the point further: I need not even have said so much, but that some of those who read these pages may not have realized the true character of Mr Archer's phantasies. The 'scutorum testudo', as William of Malmesbury describes the famous shield-wall,[66] is depicted, with his usual painstaking care, by the designer of the Bayeux Tapestry. We read of the 'testudo' at Ashdown fight, even in the days of Alfred;[67] it was, again, with the shield-wall that 'glorious Æthelstan' won the day on the hard-fought field of Brunanburh (937);[68] we hear of it at Maldon (991), where Brihtnoth, we read, 'bade his men work the war-hedge',--'that is, had made his men form the shield-wall, a sort of fortress made by holding their shields close together'.[69] And we do, in Mr Freeman's words, meet with it 'down to the end', when the war-hedge of Maldon was wrought anew, by Harold, on the hill of battle, and stood once more as if a fortress--'quasi castellum'.

THE DISPOSITION OF THE ENGLISH

To render clear the problem involved, I must first sketch as briefly as possible the nature of the ground the English held. The hill of battle is so fully described in Mr Freeman's narrative that I here need only explain that it was a long narrow spur of the downs, running nearly east and west, of which the south front was defended by the English and attacked by the Normans. The one and only point that is certain is that 'on the very crown of the hill', the site of the high altar in the future, was erected the standard of Harold.[70] This, then, the centre of the hill, was the centre of the English host. But the ground to which our attention is directed, as having 'really played the most decisive part in the great event of the place', lay to the west of this, 'where the slope is gentlest of all, where the access to the natural citadel is least difficult'.[71] Mr Freeman assumes that this ground--the 'English right', as he terms it--where the 'ascent is easiest in itself', was allotted to 'the least trustworthy portion of the English army', to 'the sudden levies of the southern shires'.[72] For this assumption, I hasten to add, there is no authority whatever. He further assumes that the first English to leave their post, in pursuit of the enemy, 'were, of course, some of the defenders of the English right'.[73] William, he holds, at the crisis of the battle, resolved to draw them again from their post by a partial feigned retreat, that 'meanwhile another division might reach the summit through the gap thus left open'. Accordingly, tempted by this stratagem, 'the English on the right wing rushed down and pursued', and their error proved 'fatal to England'.[74]

The Duke's great object was now gained; the main end
of Harold's skilful tactics had been frustrated by the
inconsiderate ardour of the least valuable portion of his
troops. Through the rash descent of the light-armed on the
right, the whole English army lost its vantage-ground. The
pursuing English had left the most easily accessible portion
of the hill open to the approach of the enemy.... The main
body of the Normans made their way on to the hill, no doubt by
the gentle slope at the point west of the present buildings.
The great advantage of the ground was now lost; the Normans
were at last on the hill.[75]

Such is Mr Freeman's explanation of how the battle was won,[76] for in this episode he discovers the decisive turning-point of the day.[77]

Now, let us consider what is involved in the theory here set forth. 'Harold's skilful tactics', we find, consisted in entrusting his weakest point, the least defensible portion of his position, to 'the least trustworthy portion of the English army'. The natural result of these insane tactics was that his weak point was forced, and the English right turned.[78] And Mr Freeman, having made this clear, complains of 'the criticisms of monks on the conduct of a consummate general', and insists that 'nowhere is Harold's military greatness so distinctly felt as when ... we tread the battlefield of his own choice'. But there is worse to come. Such tactics as these would have been mad enough, even if these raw peasants had stood behind a barricade; but if, as I hold, that barricade is a purely imaginary creation, we ask ourselves what would have happened to these unhappy creatures, protected by no 'shield-wall', and armed with 'such rustic weapons as forks and sharp stakes',[79] when, first riddled by Norman arrows and then attacked by Norman infantry, they were finally, broken and defenceless, charged by heavy cavalry. The first onslaught would have scattered them to the winds, and have won, in so doing, the key of the English position.[80] Remembering this, it is strange to learn that 'the consummate generalship of Harold is nowhere more conspicuously shown than in this memorable campaign', and that his was 'that true skill of the leader of armies, which would have placed both Harold and William high among the captains of any age'. But if the generalship of Harold was shown by entrusting to his worst troops his weakest and most important point, while posting 'the flower of the English army' just where his ground was strongest, what are we to say of 'the generalship of William, his ready eye, his quick thought', if he failed to detect and avail himself of this glaring blunder? For instead of concentrating his attack upon Harold's weak point, he left it to be assailed, we learn, by 'what was most likely the least esteemed' portion of his host,[81] while he himself with his picked troops dashed himself against an impregnable position like a mad bull against a wall. 'We read,' says Mr Freeman, 'with equal admiration of the consummate skill with which Harold chose his position and his general scheme of action, and of the wonderful readiness with which William formed and varied his plans.' For myself, I should have thought that the tactics he describes--tactics which stirred him to a burst of admiration for 'the two greatest of living captains'--would have disgraced the most incompetent commander that ever took the field.

But Harold, after all, was no fool. Are we then justified in accusing him of this supreme folly? Mr Freeman held that 'the relative position of the different divisions in the two armies seems beyond doubt'. There is, however, as I said, absolutely no evidence for Mr Freeman's assumption that the English right was entrusted to the raw levies. Against it is the fact that in this quarter the first assault was soonest repulsed: against it also is all analogy drawn from the study of English tactics. Snorro's description of Stamfordbridge is evidence, at least, that 'the fortress of shields' had a continuous line of bucklers along its whole front: Æthelred gives us the reason in his story of the Battle of the Standard; namely, that it was the front line which had to meet the shock ('periculosum dicebant si primo aggressu inermes armatis occurrerent'). It was therefore an essential principle of tactics 'quatinus armati armatos impeterent, milites congrederentur militibus'.[82] Therefore on Cowton Moor (1138), as (I hold) on the hill of Battle (1066), we find the 'strenuissimi milites in prima fronte locati'.[83]

The words 'and the lighter troops behind them', which originally followed here, have been objected to by Miss Norgate, who had originally made the same statement,[84] but who now wishes to withdraw it.[85] Henry of Huntingdon, however--like Æthelred, a contemporary authority--agrees with him in describing the dismounted knights, men with shields and _loricæ_ like the 'housecarls' at Hastings, as forming an 'iron wall' along the English front.[86] If then mailed warriors formed the front line, it is difficult to see where the 'inermis plebs', as Æthelred terms it, could be but 'behind them'. The fact is that the Battle of the Standard, for which we have excellent authorities, is of no small value for the study of the Battle of Hastings, as my opponents seem to be uncomfortably aware. 'The tactics,' Mr Freeman admits, 'were English.' We find there again the same dense array,[87] the same tactics for defence, though now rendered less passive by the development of the bowman.[88] There can, I think, be little question, if we combine the several accounts, that the Standard, with the older chiefs around it, formed the kernel of the host;[89] that the rude levies of the shire were massed round about them;[90] and that the outer rim was formed by the mailed knights, with the archers crouching for shelter behind their 'iron wall'.

Harking back to Sherstone fight (1016), we encounter precisely the same formation. 'The King,' Mr Freeman writes, 'placed his best troops in front, and the inferior part of his army in the rear.'

And he added, 'we must remember these tactics when we come to the great fight of Senlac'.[91] This was, unhappily, just what he failed to do. 'William of Poitiers,' he strangely complained, 'has his head full of Agamemnon and of Xerxes, but this obvious analogy does not seem to have occurred to him.' Have we also the reason why our author himself overlooked these obvious analogies in the fact that to illustrate the Battle of Hastings he quotes some five and twenty times from the Odyssey and the Iliad, from Herodotus and Xenophon, from Æschylus, Plutarch, and Dio Cassius; from Livy, Tacitus, Ammianus, and even Ælius Spartianus? In his later edition, however, he inserted in a footnote the words: 'On placing the inferior troops in the rear, see the tactics of Eadmund at Sherstone.'[92] 'In the _rear_?' Yes, but that is precisely my contention. The assumption that I am assailing is that they formed the _wings_.

But we are not even here at the end of Mr Freeman's confusion. He had meanwhile, in another work, published about the same time as the first edition of his third volume, written thus:

As far as I can see, King Harold put these bad troops _in the
back_ ... But his picked men he put _in front_, where the best
troops of the enemy were likely to come.[93]

This is exactly my own view; it is that 'essential principle of tactics' on which I have insisted throughout, and on which Miss Norgate has rashly endeavoured to pour contempt.[94] Mr Freeman, moreover, further on, wrote of his 'light armed' as 'the troops _in the rear_',[95] which is again my contention. What seems to have happened is that he got into his head (I can imagine how) that the 'light-armed' formed the wings, and arranged the battle on that assumption. Then remembering, when it was too late, that, according to his own precedent, they ought to have been in the rear, he hesitated to introduce a change which would affect his whole theory of the battle, and compel him to approach it _de novo_.[96]

But indeed, even apart from this, it seems doubtful, examining Mr Freeman's narrative, whether he had formed a clear conception of how the English troops were arranged, and whether, if so, he kept it in view, consistently, throughout. If we honestly seek to learn what his conception was, a careful comparison of pp. 472, 473, 475, 490, and 505, with the ground-plan, will show that the whole right wing was composed of 'light-armed troops, who broke their line to pursue'. And this view seems to be accepted and defended by Miss Norgate, who, writing as his champion, declares that to her the conclusion embodied in his ground-plan 'seems irresistible'.[97] On the other hand, pp. 471, 480, 487, and 732 most undoubtedly convey the impression that, as I have maintained, the heavy-armed English were extended along the whole front,[98] and that their defeat, in Mr Freeman's words (p. 732), was 'owing to their breaking the line of the shield-wall'. I suspect that he was led thus to contradict himself by the obvious concentration of his interest on 'the great personal struggle which was going on beneath the standard' (p. 487). Here, as is often the case throughout his work, Mr Freeman's treatment of his subject was essentially dramatic. To bring his heroes into high relief, he thrust into the background the rest of his scene as of comparatively small account. In this spirit, for instance, he wrote:

A new act in the awful drama of that day had now begun. The
Duke himself, at the head of his own Normans, again pressed
towards the standard.... A few moments more and the mighty
rivals might have met face to face, and the war-club of the
Bastard might have clashed against the lifted axe of the
Emperor of Britain (p. 483).

Homer, doubtless, would have made them meet; but a great dramatic opportunity was lost: the 'mighty rivals' seem never to have got within striking distance. Meanwhile, however, the warring hosts are left quite in the background; their fate is that of a stage crowd engaged in a stage battle. I do not mean, of course, that Mr Freeman ignores them, but that he was so engrossed in the personal exploits of his heroes as to be impatient of that careful study which the battle as a whole required, and comparatively careless of consistency in his allusions to the English array.

The charge, in short, that I have brought throughout against the disposition of the English in Mr Freeman's narrative is that his view, 'with all that it involves, was based on no authority, was merely the offspring of his own imagination, and was directly at variance with the only precedent that he vouched for the purpose'.[99] There is absolutely not a scrap of evidence that--as shown on the 'accurate' ground-plan--the English army was drawn up in three divisions, the 'housecarls' forming the centre, and the 'light-armed' the two wings. We do not even know that it formed an almost straight line.[100] The whole arrangement is sheer guesswork, and analogy, here our only guide, is wholly against it.

I cannot insist too strongly on the charge I have here made. It is no 'matter of secondary importance';[101] nor is it the case that my argument as to the 'palisade' is, as Mr Archer pretended, 'the only definite and palpable charge' that I bring 'against Mr Freeman's account of the great battle'.[102] For, as I wrote from the very first, 'rejecting Mr Freeman's views on the groupings of the English host, we reject with them _in toto_ the story he has built upon them'.[103]

My own view is based upon the fact that, in the military tactics as in the military architecture of the age, the defence trusted largely to its power of passive resistance: this was the essential principle of the ponderous Norman keep; and precisely as the walls of that keep were formed of an ashlar face of masonry backed by masses of rubble, so the fighting line of a force standing on the defensive was composed of a compact facing of heavily-armed troops backed by a rabble of half-armed peasants, or at best by what we may term the light infantry of the day. When the foe was advancing to the attack, these rear lines could discharge such weapons as they possessed--darts, arrows, stones, etc.--from behind the shelter of their comrades,[104] while at the moment of actual shock they would form a passive backing, which would save the front ranks from being broken by the enemy's impact. As the great object of the attack was to break through the line, a formation which virtually gave the advantage now possessed by a solid over a hollow square would naturally commend itself to the defence.

Now in these tactics we have the key to the true story of the battle. But, first, we must dismiss from our minds Mr Freeman's fundamental assumption, and understand that the English 'hoplites' were not massed in the centre, but were extended along the whole front, precisely as they were in battles fought both before and after. The fighting face of Harold's host was composed of this heavy soldiery, clad in helmets and mail. Arrayed in the closest order, they presented to an advancing enemy the aspect of a living rampart ('quasi castellum').

How the Normans attacked that rampart it will now be my task to show.

THE NORMAN ADVANCE

From Telham Hill Duke William scanned that living rampart, and saw clearly that 'his only chance was to tempt the English to break their shield-wall'.[105] It is chiefly from Baudri's poem that we learn how he set about it.[106]

There is no question that the fight began with an advance of the Norman infantry. William of Poitiers and Bishop Guy are in complete accordance on the fact.[107] But as my description of the infantry has been challenged,[108] I may show that it is quite beyond dispute.[109] To my argument, as reprinted below, it has been objected that I fail 'to take account of the distinction between light-armed and heavy-armed infantry'.[110] It will be seen that my argument turns, not on the armour, but on the _weapons_ of the foot. I have challenged my opponents to produce mention of any weapons but crossbows,[111] or bows and arrows, and need scarcely say that they cannot.

Describing the 'armour and weapons of the Normans', Mr Freeman, avowedly following the Tapestry, represented the infantry as all archers,[112] and divided them into two classes: (1) those 'without defensive harness'; (2) those who 'wore the defences common to the horse and foot of both armies ... the close-fitting coat of mail ... and the conical helmet'.[113] Now this division is exactly reproduced in the words of William of Poitiers, who divides his 'pedites' into two classes, distinguished only by the fact that in one were the 'firmiores et loricatos'. He does not say that the latter were _not_ archers, or crossbowmen, nor did Mr Freeman venture to assign them any other weapons.[114] Bishop Guy, moreover, distinctly tells us that they were crossbowmen (_vide infra_). The advance, therefore, in modern language, consisted of skirmishers, represented by archers and perhaps some crossbowmen; supports, namely, crossbowmen who, as a somewhat superior class, would mostly have defensive armour; and, lastly, the cavalry as reserve.[115]

Now what was the intention of this advance? Mr Freeman assumed, without hesitation, that the foot 'were to strive to break down the palisades ... and so to make ready the way for the charge of the horse' (p. 467); that 'the infantry were, therefore, exposed to the first and most terrible danger' (_ibid._); 'that the French infantry had to toil up the hill, and to break down the palisade' (p. 477).[116] But we find, on reference, that the above writers say nothing of any such intention, and do not even mention the existence of a palisade.[117] Moreover, the only weapons they speak of are crossbows and bows and arrows, which are scarcely the tools for pioneers. But William of Poitiers puts us on the track of a very different explanation: 'Pedites itaque Normanni propius accedentes _provocant_ Anglos, missilibus in eos vulnera dirigunt atque necem'. Here Baudri comes to our aid:

Nam neque Normannus consertos audet adire
Nec valet a cuneo quemlibet excipere.
Arcubus utantur dux imperat atque balistis;
Nam prius has mortes Anglia tunc didicit.
Tunc didicere mori quam non novere sagitta
Creditur a cælo mors super ingruere
Hos velut a longe comitatur militis agmen,
Palantes post se miles ut excipiat.

The Normans dared not face the serried ranks of the English: the maxim that cavalry should not charge unbroken infantry was asserting itself already. But the only means of breaking those ranks, of throwing the English into confusion, was to gall them by archers and slingers till some of them should sally forth, when their assailants would turn tail and leave them to be caught in the open and ridden down. As Bishop Guy expresses it:

Præmisit pedites committere bella sagittis,
Et balistantes inserit in medio,
Quatinus infigant volitantia vultibus arma,
Vulneribusque datis ora retro faciant,
Ordine post pedites sperat stabilire Quirites

These tactics, says Baudri, were crowned with success; the maddened English, as they dashed forth to strike their tormentors to the ground, were cut off in every direction by the horsemen waiting their chance:

Tunc præ tristitia gens effera præque pudore
Egreditur palans, insequiturque vagos.
Normanni simulantque fugam fugiuntque fugantes,
Intercepit eos undique præpes equus.
Ilico cæduntur; sic paulatim minuuntur,
Nec minuebatur callidus ordo ducis.

This account is both intelligible and consistent, but differs wholly from that of Mr Freeman. It had, however, been virtually anticipated by Mr Oman, who in his _Art of War in the Middle Ages_ (p. 25), points out, with much felicity, that

the archers, if unsupported by the knights, could easily
have been driven off the field by a general charge. United,
however, by the skilful tactics of William, the two divisions
of the invading army won the day. The Saxon mass was subjected
to exactly the same trial which befell the British squares in
the battle of Waterloo: incessant charges by a gallant cavalry
were alternated with a destructive fire of missiles. Nothing
can be more maddening than such an ordeal to the infantry
soldier, rooted to the spot by the necessities of his
formation.

Let us compare the two theories. Mr Freeman's, here again, is not even consistent. He first tells us that for the knights to charge, with 'the triple palisade still unbroken, would have been sheer madness'; in fact it was 'altogether useless' for them to advance until the infantry had broken down the palisade.[118] But this the infantry failed to do,[119] whereupon--the cavalry charged 'the impenetrable fortress of timber' (p. 479)! One is surely reminded of the immortal Don, when 'a todo el galope de Rocinante', he charged the windmill.

My own theory involves no such inconsistencies. I hold--not as a conjecture based on a hypothetical palisade, but on the excellent authority of Baudri and William of Poitiers, that the infantry were used for the definite purpose of galling the English by their missiles, and so enticing them to leave their ranks and become a prey to the horse. As soon as their line had thus been broken, the cavalry were to charge.

Up to this point, the English army, as a whole, had kept its formation; but now the strain on its patience had become too great to be borne. Breaking its ranks, with one accord, the whole host rushed upon its foes, and drove them before it in confusion right up to the Duke's post:

Tandem jactura gens irritata frequenti,
Ordinibus spretis irruit unanimis.
Tunc quoque plus solito fugientum terga cecidit,
Et miles vultum fugit ad usque ducis.

This explains what had always been to me a difficulty, namely, the panic-stricken flight of the Normans at this stage of the battle. That they should have 'lost heart' (p. 480) at the firmness of the English is natural enough; but that they should have 'turned and fled' (_ibid._) from a force which did not pursue them seemed improbable. The difficulty is solved by Baudri's mention of the wild onslaught by the English. Moreover, Bishop Guy's description of the rout of the assailants--which Mr Freeman assigned to this stage of the battle--agrees well with that of Baudri:

Anglorum populus, numero superante, repellit
Hostes inque retro compulit ora dari;
Et fuga ficta prius fit tunc virtute coacta;
Normanni fugiunt, dorsa tegunt clipei.

Again, Baudri's poem suggests a novel view by its definite statement that the Normans in their flight reached the Duke's post. Mr Freeman imagined that the Duke himself had been fighting in the front line (pp. 479, 480), but a careful comparison of his two authorities, William of Poitiers and Bishop Guy (p. 482), will show that, on the contrary, they support Baudri's statement. Each speaks of the Duke as 'meeting' (_occurrens_--_occurrit_) the fugitives, a difficulty which Mr Freeman evaded by writing that 'he met _or pursued_ the fugitives'.

From this flight the Normans were rallied by the desperate efforts of the Duke himself, who, as is usual at such moments, was believed to have fallen. I deem this episode a fixed point, and it conveniently divides the battle. All our four leading authorities--the Tapestry, William of Poitiers, Bishop Guy, and Baudri--are here in complete agreement. William describes the Duke as 'nudato insuper capite'; Guy tells us that 'iratus galea nudat et ipse caput'; Baudri writes 'subito galeam submovet a capite'; in the Tapestry, 'William (writes Dr Bruce), when he wishes to show himself in order to contradict the rumour that he has been killed, is obliged to lift his helmet almost off his head' (p. 98). It is singular that so striking and well-established an episode is wholly ignored by Wace.

THE FOSSE DISASTER

The serious character of the assailants' flight is duly recognized by Mr Freeman.[120] We could have no more eloquent witness to the fact than the admission even by William of Poitiers that the Duke's Normans themselves gave way, or the description of them by Bishop Guy as 'gens sua victa'. The only point in question here is whether what I call 'the fosse disaster' was an incident of this headlong flight or happened at a later stage of the battle. Mr Freeman, discussing 'the order of events',[121] faced the difficulty frankly, observing that Guy had placed the feigned flight before what I have termed above the dividing incident of the day, and that this view 'may be thought to be confirmed by the Tapestry', etc., etc. We have here perhaps the most difficult problem raised in the course of the battle, and one which it would be easier and safer to pass over in silence. As to Guy, I suggest, as a possible solution--it does not profess to be more--that what he was describing was not the great feigned flight but the lesser man[oe]uvres of the same character described by Baudri above. He may, of course, have transferred to these the importance of the later episode. On the real flight, at least, he is sound. Of the Tapestry I would speak with more confidence. 'In the nature of things,' Mr Freeman wrote, 'exact chronological order is not its strongest point' (p. 768). But in this case there was nothing to make it depart from that order, no reason why it should not place the incident of 'the fosse disaster' after the central incident of the day, instead of before, if that were its right position. Moreover, it is here, we find, in the closest agreement with Wace; and though I claim, as did Mr Freeman, the right of rejecting his testimony when wholly unsupported (as still more, when opposed to probability), yet such marked agreement as this is not to be lightly cast aside.

In any case, nothing can be more unfortunate than Mr Freeman's treatment of what he describes as the 'great slaughter of the French in the western ravine' (p. 489). This is a scene invented by Mr Freeman alone, and illustrates the peculiar use he made, at times, of his authorities. There is no question that the Norman knights suffered, in the course of the day, at least one such disaster as the nobles of France at Courtrai (1302) or her cuirassiers at Waterloo. But five authorities, so far as one can see, place the incident in the thick of the battle, while three others assign it to the pursuit of the defeated English. It is not strange, therefore, that some writers should have held that there was but one such incident: Mr Freeman, however, holds that there were two; and I expressly disclaim questioning his view, the matter being one of opinion. Assuming then, as he does, that the episode occurred in the course of the battle, I turn to the spirited version of Wace, as Mr Archer defies me to 'impeach Wace's authority' (p. 346). The 'old Norman poet' is here very precise. He first tells us (ll. 7869-70, 8103-6) that the English had made a 'fosse', which the Normans had passed unnoticed in their advance.[122] These passages Mr Freeman accepts without question (p. 476). But then Wace proceeds to state (ll. 8107-20) that the Normans, driven back, as we have seen, by the English, tumbled, men and horses, into this treacherous 'fosse' and perished in great numbers. Now Wace, far from standing alone, is here in curiously close agreement with the Tapestry of Bayeux. Two successive scenes in that 'most authetic record' are styled 'Hic ceciderunt simul Angli et Franci in pr[oe]lio; hic Odo episcopus baculum tenens confortat pueros.' Wace describes these scenes in thirty-six lines (ll. 8103-38), devoting eighteen lines to the first and the same number to the second. Actual comparison alone can show how close the agreement is. Henry of Huntingdon, we may add, independently confirms the statement that English as well as French perished in the fatal fosse.[123]

Now all this is quite opposed to Mr Freeman's 'conception of the battle'. He had, therefore, to adapt, with no gentle hands, his authorities to his requirements. Cinderella's stepmother, when her daughter's foot could not be got into the golden shoe, armed herself, we read, with axe and scissors, and trimmed it to the requisite shape. With no less decision the late Professor set about his own task. Wace's evidence he simply suppressed; Henry of Huntingdon's he ignored; but that of the Bayeux Tapestry could not be so easily disposed of. I invite particular attention to his treatment of this, his 'highest authority'. Retaining in its natural place (pp. 481-2) the second of the two scenes we have described, he threw forward the one preceding it to a later stage of the battle (p. 490). Nor did his vigorous adaptation stop even here. The scene thus wrenched from its place depicts a single incident: mounted Normans are tumbling headlong into a ditch at the foot of a mound, on which 'light-armed' English stand assailing them with their weapons. The fight is hand to hand; the bodies touch. And yet the Professor treats this scene as a description of two quite separate events happening at a distance from each other. These he terms (p. 489) the 'stand of the English at the detached hill'; and the 'great slaughter of the French in the western ravine'. But on referring to his own ground-plan, we find that this 'ravine' and the 'detached hill' were a quarter of a mile apart, with the slopes of the main hill between them.

My criticism here is twofold. In the first place, Mr Freeman endeavoured to conceal the liberties he had taken with his leading authority. No one would gather from his narrative of the battle that any such violence had been used; nor would anyone who read of the 'hill' episode that 'the scene is vividly shown in the Tapestry' (p. 489), and, subsequently, of the 'ravine' disaster, that 'this scene is most vividly shown in the Tapestry' (p. 490), imagine that 'the incidents of the ravine and the little hill' (p. 768) are in the Tapestry one and the same. In the second place, the large part which the writer's own imagination plays in his narrative of the fight is here clearly seen. There is nothing, for instance, in any authority to connect 'the western ravine' with 'the great slaughter of the French'. It is placed by those who mention it in a 'fosse', 'fossatum', or 'fovea'. 'If Wace is any authority,' to quote Mr Archer's words, 'the question is settled once and for all';[124] the slaughter took place not in the 'ravine', but in a ditch which according to him, the English had dug to the south of the hill, and which, according to Henry of Huntingdon, they had cunningly concealed. Mr Freeman produces no authority in support of his own fancy; his only argument is that the slaughter

must have happened somewhere to the south or south-west of the
hill. The small ravine to the south-west seems exactly what is
wanted (p. 771).

The 'western ravine' however, does not fulfil these requirements (see ground-plan, where it lies to the north-west of the hill); while Wace's 'fosse', which--though here ignoring it--he had already accepted, lay, as required, to the south of the hill. Wace mentions another instance (ll. 1737-50) in which this stratagem was adopted,[125] but whether our ditch was dug, as he states, expressly or not, the fact of its existence does not depend on his evidence alone.

To resume: accepting provisionally Mr Freeman's view (iii. 770) that there were two disasters to the horse, one 'happening comparatively early in the battle', and the other 'which William of Poitiers, Orderic and the Battle chronicler place at the very end of the battle', as occurring in the pursuit of the defeated English, we find that the former is mentioned by five writers. The Tapestry and Wace agree absolutely in making it an episode of the real flight of the Normans before the great rally; Henry of Huntingdon assigns it to the great feigned flight, later in the battle; William of Malmesbury seems to make it happen during the pursuit by the Normans after their feigned flight; the anonymous writer quoted by Andresen (ii. 713) from Le Prevost may be left out of the question. Yet, in spite of all this contradiction, Mr Freeman assigns this striking episode, not as a conjecture, but as historic fact, to the pursuit of the English by the 'Bretons'[126] after the feigned flight (p. 489). Let me make my position clear. We expect an historian to weigh, as an expert, the evidence before him: we look to him for guidance where that evidence is conflicting. But we have a right to protest against the statement, as historic fact, of hypotheses which cannot be established, and which are quite possibly wrong. Where the evidence is flatly contradictory, the fact that it is so should be made clear; conflicting statements should not be evaded, nor evidence, such as that of the Tapestry, appealed to, when it proves to be opposed to, not in favour of, the writer's hypothesis. Dealing with the Conqueror's march on London, after his great victory, Mr Parker has insisted with much force, on the principle for which I am contending.