but he chose for the place of battle a spot where those tactics would have the advantage.  A battle on the low ground would have been favourable to cavalry; Harold therefore occupied and fenced in a hill, the hill of Senlac, the site in after days of the abbey and town of Battle, and there awaited the Norman attack.  The Norman horsemen had thus to make their way up the hill under the shower of the English javelins, and to meet the axes as soon as they reached the barricade.  And these tactics were thoroughly successful, till the inferior troops were tempted to come down from the hill and chase the Bretons whom they had driven back.  This suggested to William the device of the feigned flight; the English line of defence was broken, and the advantage of ground was lost.  Thus was the great battle lost.  And the war too was lost by the deaths of Harold and his brothers, which left England without leaders, and by the unyielding valour of Harold’s immediate following.  They were slain to a man, and south-eastern England was left defenceless.

William, now truly the Conqueror in the vulgar sense, was still far from having full possession of his conquest.  He had military possession of part of one shire only; he had to look for further resistance, and he met with not a little.  But his combined luck and policy served him well.  He could put on the form of full possession before he had the reality; he could treat all further resistance as rebellion against an established authority; he could make resistance desultory and isolated.  William had to subdue England in detail; he had never again to fight what the English Chroniclers call a folk-fight.  His policy after his victory was obvious.  Still uncrowned, he was not, even in his own view, king, but he alone had the right to become king.  He had thus far been driven to maintain his rights by force; he was not disposed to use force any further, if peaceful possession was to be had.  His course was therefore to show himself stern to all who withstood him, but to take all who submitted into his protection and favour.  He seems however to have looked for a speedier submission than really happened.  He waited a while in his camp for men to come in and acknowledge him.  As none came, he set forth to win by the strong arm the land which he claimed of right.

Thus to look for an immediate submission was not unnatural; fully believing in the justice of his own cause, William would believe in it all the more after the issue of the battle.  God, Harold had said, should judge between himself and William, and God had judged in William’s favour.  With all his clear-sightedness, he would hardly understand how differently things looked in English eyes.  Some indeed, specially churchmen, specially foreign churchmen, now began to doubt whether to fight against William was not to fight against God.  But to the nation at large William was simply as Hubba, Swegen, and Cnut in past times.  England had before now been conquered,