pressed-it was Waterloo without the Prussians. Normans could avail nothing against that serried mass. 139 Dash'd on every rocky square, Their surging charges foam'd themselves away. The As Mr. Oman has so well observed, the Norman horse might have surged for ever for ever "around the impenetrable shield-wall." It was only, as he and Mr. Hunt 10 have shown, by the skilful combination of horsemen and archers by the maddening showers of arrows between the charges of the horse, that the English, especially the lighter armed, were stung into breaking their formation and abandoning that passive defence to which they were unfortunately restricted. "While no mode of array could be stronger so long as the line remained unbroken, it made it hard to form the line again." Dazzled by the rapid movements of their foes, now advancing, now retreating, either in feint or in earnest, the English, in places, broke their line, and then the Duke, as Mr. Oman writes, "thrust his horsemen into the gaps." All this is quite certain, and is what the authorities plainly describe. Let us, then, keep to what we know. Is it not enough for us to picture the English line stubbornly striving to the last to close its broken ranks, the awful scene of slaughter and confusion, as the Old Guard of Harold, tortured by Norman arrows, found the horsemen among them at last, slashing and piercing right and left. Still the battle-axe blindly smote; dogthey fought, till the axes dropped from And so they fell. 29 142 gedly, grimly still their lifeless grasp. Mr. Archer, when he first came forward to defend "Mr. 180 Social England, i. 299. “Mr. Oman, like Mr. J. H. Round, knows nothing of the famous 'palisade,' but only of the 'shield-wall' of the English" (Speaker, 2 Dec., 1893). 140 Norman Britain, p. 79. 141 Ibid., p. 8o. 142 Social England, p. 300. His Champion's Defiance 391 Freeman's account of the great battle," 14 observed that I claimed "here to prove the entire inadequacy of Mr. Freeman's work," that I held him "wrong, completely wrong in his whole conception of the battle." And he admitted that "such a contention, it will at once be perceived, is very different from any mere criticism of detail; it affects the centre and the very heart of Mr. Freeman's work. If he could blunder here in the most careful elaborated passage of his whole history, he could blunder anywhere; his reputation for accuracy would be gone almost beyond hope of retrieving it" (p. 336). I would rather say "Blunder," surely, is a harsh word. that the historian is seen here at his strongest and at his weakest at his weakest in his tendency to follow blindly individual authorities in turn, instead of grasping them as a whole, and, worse still, in adapting them, at need, to his own preconceived notions; at his strongest, in his Homeric power of making the actors in his drama live and move before us. Not in vain has "the wand of the enchanter," as an ardent admirer once termed it, been waved around Harold and his host. We are learning from recent German researches how the narratives of early Irish warfare are perfectly surrounded with magic"; how, for instance, at the battle of Culdreimne "a Druid wove a magic hedge, which he placed before the army as a hindrance to the enemy." But spells are now no longer wrought With woven paces and with waving hands; and the Druid's hedge must go the way of our own magician's "palisade." But, as I foresaw, in his eagerness to prove, at least, the existence of a palisade, my critic was soon reduced to impugning Mr. Freeman's own supreme authority, and at last to throwing over Mr. Freeman himself. "Incidit in Scyllam cupiens vitare Charybdim." Sneering' Sneering 15 at what 148 Cont. Rev., p. 353. 144 Ibid., p. 335. the historian termed his "highest," his "primary" authority, that "precious monument," the Bayeux Tapestry -merely because it will not square with his views-he rejects utterly Mr. Freeman's theory as to its date and origin, and substitutes one which the Professor described as "utterly inconceivable." 147 He has further informed us that common sense" tells him that the English axemen cannot possibly have fought "in the close array of the shield-wall," as Mr. Freeman says they did.18 And then he finally demolishes Mr. Freeman's "conception of the battle" by dismissing "an imaginary shield-wall," 149 and assuring us that the absurd vision of "an extended shieldwall vanishes like smoke." 150 It is impossible not to pity Mr. Freeman's would-be champion. Scorning, at the outset, the thought that his hero could err "in the most carefully elaborated passage of his whole history," "151 his attitude of bold defiance was a joy to Mr. Freeman's friends." 152 ἀμφὶ δ ̓ ἄρ ̓ αὐτῷ βαῖνε λέων ὥς ἀλκὶ πεποιθώς, πρόσθε δέ οἱ δύρυ τ ̓ ἔσχε καὶ ἀσπίδα πάντος είσην, τὸν κτάμεναι μεμαὼς ὅς τις τοῦ γ ̓ ἀντίος ἔλθοι, But his wildly brandished weapon proved more deadly to friend than foe: he discovered, as I knew, he could only oppose me by making jettison of Mr. Freeman's views. Of this we have seen above examples striking enough; but the climax was reached in his chief contention, namely, that the lines in the Roman de Rou, which describe, Mr. Freeman asserted, "the array of the shield-wall," 158 cannot, 147 Ibid., 224, 257. 146 E.H.R., ix. 219-225. 148 N.C., ii. 469; and supra, p. 356. 149 Cont. Rev., 352. 151 Cont. Rev., 335-336. 152 The Reviewer 150 Ibid., 348. tells us that Mr. Freeman wrong, completely wrong, in his whole conception of the battle. His attack must be held to have failed" (Cont. Rev., pp. 335, 353). 158 N.C., iii. 763. His Champion's Collapse 393 No on many grounds, be "referred to a shield-wall." 154 contradiction could be more complete. So he now finds himself forced to write : I do not say I have never said that I agree with every word that Mr. Freeman has written about the great battle; but I do regard his account of Hastings as the noblest battle-piece in our historical literature-perhaps in that of the world." 155 "O most lame and impotent conclusion!" We are discussing whether that account is "right," not whether it is "noble." To the splendour of that narrative I have borne no sparing witness. I have spoken of its “superb vividness," I have praised its "epic grandeur," I have dwelt on the writer's "Homeric power of making the actors in his drama live and move before us," and have compared his tale with the "glorious description" in the saga of Stamford Bridge. But the nearer it approaches to the epic and the saga, the less likely is that stirring tale to be rigidly confined to fact. I will not say of Mr. Archer, "his attack must be held to have failed," for that would imperfectly express its utter and absolute collapse. The whole of my original argument as to the narrative of the battle remains not merely unshaken, but, it will be seen, untouched. Mr. Archer himself has now pleaded that "the only" point he "took up directly" was that of the disputed passage in Wace; 166 and here he could only make even the semblance of a case by deliberately ignoring and suppressing Mr. Freeman's own verdict (iii. 763-4), to which, from the very first, I have persistently referred. In his latest, as in his earliest article, he adheres to this deliberate suppression, and falsely represents "Mr. Freeman's interpretation" as "a palisade or barricade" alone. 157 Those who may object to plain speaking should rather 154 Cont. Rev., p. 349. 156 E.H.R., ix. 607. Cf. Mr. Archer's articles passim. 157 E.H.R., ix. 606. Supra, p. 347. denounce the tactics that make such speaking necessary. When my adversary claims that his case is proved, if the disputed passage does not describe a shield-wall, he is perfectly aware that Mr. Freeman distinctly asserted that it did. To suppress that fact, as Mr. Archer does, 158 can only be described as dishonest. Judging from the desperate tactics to which my opponent resorted, it would seem that my "attack" on Mr. Freeman's work cannot here be impugned by any straightforward means. The impotent wrath aroused by its success will lead, no doubt, to other attempts equally unscrupulous and equally futile. But truth cannot be silenced, facts cannot be obscured. I appeal, sure of my ground, to the verdict of historical scholars, awaiting, with confidence and calm, the inevitable triumph of the truth. CONCLUSION. "History is philosophy teaching by examples." In one sense the period of the Conquest was, as Mr. Freeman asserted in his preface, "a period of our history which is full alike of political instruction and of living personal interest." In one sense, it is an object-lesson never more urgently needed than it is at the present hour. Only that lesson is one which Mr. Freeman could never teach, because it is the bitterest commentary on the doctrines he most adored. In the hands of a patriot, in the hands of a writer who placed England before party, the tale might have burned like a beacon-fire, warning us that what happened in the past, might happen now, to-day. The Battle of Hastings has its moral and its moral is for us. An almost anarchical excess of liberty, the want of a strong centralized system, the absorption in party strife, the belief that politics are statesmanship, and that oratory will save 168 E.H.R., ix. 606, 607. My readers are invited to refer to this article and to that in the Cont. Rev. (March, 1893), and test my statement for themselves. |