To withstand the charge of the Norman horsemen, Harold clave to the national tactics, but he chose for the place of battle a spot where those tactics would have the advantage.A battle on the low ground would have been favourable to cavalry; Harold therefore occupied and fenced in a hill, the hill of Senlac, the site in after days of the abbey and town of Battle, and there awaited the Norman attack.The Norman horsemen had thus to make their way up the hill under the shower of the English javelins, and to meet the axes as soon as they reached the barricade.And these tactics were thoroughly successful, till the inferior troops were tempted to come down from the hill and chase the Bretons whom they had driven back.This suggested to William the device of the feigned flight; the English line of defence was broken, and the advantage of ground was lost.
Thus was the great battle lost.And the war too was lost by the deaths of Harold and his brothers, which left England without leaders, and by the unyielding valour of Harold's immediate following.They were slain to a man, and south-eastern England was left defenceless.
William, now truly the Conqueror in the vulgar sense, was still far from having full possession of his conquest.He had military possession of part of one shire only; he had to look for further resistance, and he met with not a little.But his combined luck and policy served him well.He could put on the form of full possession before he had the reality; he could treat all further resistance as rebellion against an established authority; he could make resistance desultory and isolated.William had to subdue England in detail; he had never again to fight what the English Chroniclers call a FOLK-FIGHT.His policy after his victory was obvious.Still uncrowned, he was not, even in his own view, king, but he alone had the right to become king.He had thus far been driven to maintain his rights by force; he was not disposed to use force any further, if peaceful possession was to be had.His course was therefore to show himself stern to all who withstood him, but to take all who submitted into his protection and favour.He seems however to have looked for a speedier submission than really happened.He waited a while in his camp for men to come in and acknowledge him.As none came, he set forth to win by the strong arm the land which he claimed of right.
Thus to look for an immediate submission was not unnatural; fully believing in the justice of his own cause, William would believe in it all the more after the issue of the battle.God, Harold had said, should judge between himself and William, and God had judged in William's favour.With all his clear-sightedness, he would hardly understand how differently things looked in English eyes.
Some indeed, specially churchmen, specially foreign churchmen, now began to doubt whether to fight against William was not to fight against God.But to the nation at large William was simply as Hubba, Swegen, and Cnut in past times.England had before now been conquered, but never in a single fight.Alfred and Edmund had fought battle after battle with the Dane, and men had no mind to submit to the Norman because he had been once victorious.But Alfred and Edmund, in alternate defeat and victory, lived to fight again; their people had not to choose a new king; the King had merely to gather a new army.But Harold was slain, and the first question was how to fill his place.The Witan, so many as could be got together, met to choose a king, whose first duty would be to meet William the Conqueror in arms.The choice was not easy.
Harold's sons were young, and not born AEthelings.His brothers, of whom Gyrth at least must have been fit to reign, had fallen with him.Edwin and Morkere were not at the battle, but they were at the election.But schemes for winning the crown for the house of Leofric would find no favour in an assembly held in London.For lack of any better candidate, the hereditary sentiment prevailed.
Young Edgar was chosen.But the bishops, it is said, did not agree;they must have held that God had declared in favour of William.
Edwin and Morkere did agree; but they withdrew to their earldoms, still perhaps cherishing hopes of a divided kingdom.Edgar, as king-elect, did at least one act of kingship by confirming the election of an abbot of Peterborough; but of any general preparation for warfare there is not a sign.The local resistance which William met with shows that, with any combined action, the case was not hopeless.But with Edgar for king, with the northern earls withdrawing their forces, with the bishops at least lukewarm, nothing could be done.The Londoners were eager to fight; so doubtless were others; but there was no leader.So far from there being another Harold or Edmund to risk another battle, there was not even a leader to carry out the policy of Fabius and Gyrth.
