but national. The Norman duke had, by a wanton invasion, wronged,
not the King only, but every man in England, and every man might
claim to help in driving him out. Again, in an ordinary wager of
battle, the judgement can be enforced; here, whether William slew
Harold or Harold slew William, there was no means of enforcing the
judgement except by the strength of the two armies. If Harold
fell, the English army were not likely to receive William as king;
if William fell, the Norman army was still less likely to go
quietly out of England. The challenge was meant as a mere blind;
it would raise the spirit of William's followers; it would be
something for his poets and chroniclers to record in his honour;
that was all.


The actual battle, fought on Senlac, on Saint Calixtus' day, was
more than a trial of skill and courage between two captains and two
armies. It was, like the old battles of Macedonian and Roman, a
trial between two modes of warfare. The English clave to the old
Teutonic tactics. They fought on foot in the close array of the
shield-wall. Those who rode to the field dismounted when the fight
began. They first hurled their javelins, and then took to the
weapons of close combat. Among these the Danish axe, brought in by
Cnut, had nearly displaced the older English broadsword. Such was
the array of the housecarls and of the thegns who had followed
Harold from York or joined him on his march. But the treason of
Edwin and Morkere had made it needful to supply the place of the
picked men of Northumberland with irregular levies, armed almost
anyhow. Of their weapons of various kinds the bow was the rarest.
The strength of the Normans lay in the arms in which the English
were lacking, in horsemen and archers. These last seem to have