"They have landed at Pevensey Bay.
They are out already, harrying the land. Smoke and fire are the beacons
of their march."
That feast came to a sudden end. Soon Harold and his men were in full
march for London. Here recruits were gathered in all haste. Within a
week the English king was marching towards where the Normans lay
encamped. He was counselled to remain and gather more men, leaving some
one else to lead his army.
"Not so," he replied; "an English king must never turn his back to the
enemy."
We have now a third picture to draw, and a great one,--that of the
mighty and momentous conflict which ended in the death of the last of
the Saxon kings, and the Norman conquest of England.
The force of William greatly outnumbered that of Harold. It comprised
about sixty thousand men, while Harold had but twenty or thirty
thousand. And the Normans were more powerfully armed, the English having
few archers, while many of them were hasty recruits who bore only
pitchforks and other tools of their daily toil. The English king,
therefore, did not dare to meet the heavily-armed and mail-clad Normans
in the open field. Wisely he led his men to the hill of Senlac, near
Hastings, a spot now occupied by the small town of Battle, so named in
memory of the great fight.
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