Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Within a few weeks after the fatal day of Senlac, all resistance on the part of the disunited English, left without a recognised leader, became hopeless; and William was crowned on Christmas Day at Westminster Abbey, which on the previous feast of the Epiphany, in the same year, as we reckon time, had witnessed the coronation of his hapless rival.
The address was too long for the duke's faithful comrade, William Fitz-Osborn. "My lord," said he, "we dally; let us all to arms and forward, forward!" The army got in motion, starting from the hill of Telham or Heathland, according to Mr. Freeman, marching to attack the English on the opposite hill of Senlac.
'The English, reported Duke William's outposts to their master, 'rush onward through their pillaged country with the fury of madmen. 'Let them come, and come soon! was the duke's reply. At Senlac, near the town of Hastings in Sussex, the English came in sight of their foes.
The night of March 28, 182-, was precisely one of the nights that were wont to call forth these expressions of commiseration. The level rainstorm smote walls, slopes, and hedges like the clothyard shafts of Senlac and Crecy.
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.
And who but he among the men who built great cities in days before Saxon and Norman had met at Senlac, could look to find his work so little scarred by time, or disguised by change? Twelve miles of rampart surround the city still, if we include the walls that guard the Sultan's maze garden, and seven of the many gates Ibn Tachfin knew are swung open to the dawn of each day now.
"Senlac left gaps enough among the noblemen of the South, which they can fill up, in the place of the French scum who now riot over Wessex. And if that should not suffice, what higher honor for me, or for my daughter the Queen-Dowager, than to devote our lands to the heroes who have won them back for us?"
William constrained Harold to fight, but Harold, in his turn, constrained William to fight on ground of Harold's own choosing. The latter halted at a point distant about seven miles from the headquarters of the invaders, and pitched his camp upon the ever-memorable heights of Senlac. It was his policy not to attack.
In his right hand he grasped his hunting knife a puny, futile thing indeed by comparison with the great rows of mighty teeth which lined Sheeta's powerful jaws, and the sharp talons encased within his padded paws; yet the young Lord Greystoke faced it with the same courageous resignation with which some fearless ancestor went down to defeat and death on Senlac Hill by Hastings.
"Let us die, then, like brave men," was the cry of many, "since we cannot live as freemen." "And shed our blood in vain, leaving the victory to the oppressors! Nay, we must live for another Senlac, which shall reverse the doom of the former.
Word Of The Day