indomitable energy of Harold's troops had perfected in the early hours
of the morning. Many of the stakes in this, the reader may note with
pardonable pride, were of English oak--sharpened at the tip.

William's plan (if plan it may be called) was, as we have seen,
necessarily futile and was foredoomed to failure. But Harold had no
intention to let the action bear no more fruit than a tactical victory
upon this particular field. The brain that had designed the exact
synchrony of Stamford Bridge and the famous march southward from the
Humber was of that sort which is only found once in many centuries of
the history of war and which is (it may be said without boasting)
peculiar to this island.

Another general would have awaited the second charge with its useless
butchery and still more useless contest for the barren name of victory.
Not so Harold. Those commanding, cold grey eyes of his swept the line in
a comprehensive glance, and though no written record of the detail
remains, he must know little of the character of the man who does not
understand that from Harold certainly proceeded the order for what
followed.

The forces at the centre, which he commanded in person, deftly withdrew
before the futile gallop of William's cavalry, leaving, with that
coolness which has ever distinguished our troops, the laggards to their
fate. At the same moment, and with marvellous precision, the left and
right were withdrawn from the plateau rapidly and as by magic, and the
old-fashioned tactics of mere impact (which William of Normandy seems
seriously to have relied on!) were spent and wasted upon the now
evacuated summit of the hill.