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Updated: June 9, 2025
The wary strategy of his French campaigns, the organization of his attack upon England, the victory at Senlac, the quick resource, the steady perseverance which achieved the Conquest showed the wide range of his generalship. His political ability had shown itself from the first moment of his accession to the ducal throne. William had the instinct of government.
One day ye may safely give to rest; the day after tomorrow we march again; for Harold will complete his levies on the 10th, and we must not be behind. Goodnight! Saints and angels guard your well-deserved rest." The brief period of rest passed rapidly away, and the last night came the last before departure for the fatal field of Senlac.
The most Teutonic part of Normandy was the one part which had a real grievance to avenge on Englishmen; in their land, and in their land alone, had Englishmen, for a moment in the days of Æthelred, shown themselves as invaders and ravagers. But before the men of the Côtentin could show themselves as avengers at Senlac, they had first to be themselves overthrown at Val-ès-dunes.
He occupied and fortified a post of great natural strength, which he speedily made into what is distinctly spoken of as a castle. The hill of Senlac, now occupied by the abbey and town of Battle, commemorates in its later name the great event of which it was the scene. The morning of the decisive day, Saturday, October 14, at last had come.
Indeed, if Harold, or either of his brothers, had survived, the remains of the English army might have formed again in the wood, and could at least have effected an orderly retreat, and prolonged the war. But both Gurth and Leofwine, and all the bravest thanes of Southern England, lay dead on Senlac, around their fallen king and the fallen standard of their country.
Immediately after his victory William vowed to build an abbey on the site; and a fair and stately pile soon rose there, where for many ages the monks prayed, and said masses for the souls of those who were slain in the battle, whence the abbey took its name. Before that time the place was called Senlac.
O'Hagan, Q.C., of Dublin. Most probably it was a curtailed version of this romance that is referred to by Wace in his "Roman le Rou," when he records how, as the Normans marched to Senlac Hill, in 1066, the minstrel Taillefer sang, "Of Roland and the heroes all Who fell at fatal Roncesvall."
I have to tell of rebellion and sacrilege; our English vassals have risen against us, and my brave father has fallen by their hands; our castle is in their holding, and they have driven the brethren of St. Benedict homeless from their monastery." "And who has dared this deed?" "Wilfred, son of the rebel who fell at Senlac." "Wilfred of Aescendune!
It will not have escaped thy remembrance, most holy father in God, that on the fatal field of Senlac fatal, that is, to my countrymen, for I am not ashamed to call myself an Englishman thou didst favourably notice a youth, who sought and found his father's dead body, by name Wilfred, son of Edmund of Aescendune.
Nowhere, indeed, in the whole history of the human race, can we point to such a well-rounded and unbroken continuity of political life as we find in the thousand years of English history that have elapsed since the victory of William the Norman at Senlac.
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