Part 3

Of this latter part the first three panels (38, 39, 40) are concerned with the building and launching of the ships. In the first William orders the fleet to be built. He is seated upon his throne, and is delivering his commands.

Next you have conventional representations of men cutting down trees, rinding off the bark, and making planks. Then you have the construction of the vessels and the dragging of them to the sea from the slips. It is remarkable how little the artist has attempted to symbolise the implements of this industry; the adze and the axe are all that he gives us. The hammer is not recognisable, nor the nail, nor any other thing in the construction of the boats. Following these three you get the provisioning of the fleet, and in this long panel, or rather two panels undivided (41 and 42) we must closely watch the details, for they are of great historical interest. There you will see the servants bringing on board the swords in their scabbards, the lances tied on to wagons, which also bear barrels of wine; over one man’s shoulder a wine skin, over another’s a small barrel, and, borne upon poles, which bear their weight and stretch them out, the heavy coats of mail for the knights. These panels ended, you have the sailing of the fleet, monotonous and undivided, covering what may be called four panels (43, 44, 45, and 46), though all are continuous. In these the draughtsman has concerned himself to insist upon the number of horses that were carried, and upon little more. But at the end of the inscription you have that piece of historical documentary evidence, “And he came to Pevensey” (it is written just above the last of the four foremost ships proceeding to disembarkation: the ship with the cross upon its mast). The size of the transport, the great number of the ships, has evidently impressed the artist, and he has tried to symbolise it. You get exactly the same thing in Wace: “I have heard it told to my father that there were 700 ships less four.” Then, again, the word Pevensey comes into the _Roman de Rou_, though spelt “Penevesal” in that document.

In the next panel (47), which is the disembarkation, the horses are again insisted upon, and one curious point which I would remark, the un-stepping of the mast. There are not a few descriptions in the later Dark Ages and the early Middle Ages which lead us to believe that the mast of their small craft was not fixed: for instance, the Danes going up river above London Bridge. Let me repeat again, at the risk of tedium, that the episode of the disembarkation of horses, which the men of the time seem to have been particularly struck by, makes the Tapestry follow Wace. Once landed, the army in the next panel (48) fully accoutred—or rather patrols of it—rides out to forage, and you get as a sequel (in 49) the raiding of houses, the slaughtering of cattle and of sheep, the commandeering of horses; and next again (in 50) you have the preparing of a meal, and it is to be remarked how minute are the details here compared with the vagueness of detail in the building of the ships. Look, for instance, at the little stove of charcoal on which one of the cooks is preparing the meat, and the spits with their roasted pieces, and see how the draughtsman—whoever he was—knew more of courts than of artisans. And the feast itself, which follows, is interesting as showing a table laid out in continuity with classic custom, served from the inside of its horse-shoe or oblong. In the inscription, though hardly to be discerned upon the Tapestry, we have the benediction of the meats by the bishop—and the bishop should mean Odo. But we have, I believe, no MSS. authority for that little incident at all. The bishop is probably brought in here for the purpose of the next scene, where he sits with his brother, Duke William, and with his other brother, Robert, making council. The symbolism of the three figures is obvious; the portraiture of William reappears, the unarmed priest upon the left, the vassal brother upon the right making ready to draw the sword. In the next panel (52) there is given the throwing up of earthworks for a fortified camp at Hastings (the spade is half warfare), and here notice the figure of Robert of Eu, for it exactly follows the account of Wace. The figure holds the lance, and in command of the building of the camp is the man whom the _Roman de Rou_ speaks of as commanding the same work.

With this panel the preliminaries of the action may be said to end, and the advance towards the battle itself to begin. There are two incidents in the next panel introducing that advance: one in which a messenger from Harold reaches William (whose portrait is again clearly marked), another in which the act of war begins with the burning of a house.

Wace gives us the story of a friendly baron, whose name he did not know, but who came and warned William of Harold’s movements. As to the burning of the house, there has been a great deal of guesswork about it. I believe it means no more than a bit of conventional symbolism that the war has begun in earnest. To these two incidents in panel 53 succeed the feats of arms which take up the remaining part of the Tapestry, and which I will treat as a whole.

This last portion of the document consists in twenty-two panels, from the 54th to the 75th inclusive. In the first you have the conventional representation of a knight fully armed representing the whole body as it were, and riding out from Hastings on the morning of that October day which by sunset had determined the fate of England.

It has been said by more than one modern English writer that the soldier thus pictured is William himself, and consequently that the horse is that Spanish horse which Alphonso had given William, and that its leader is William’s old liegeman, Walter Giffard, who had brought it back with him from Spain.

Now this—like such masses of Freeman!—is not only conjecture, it is also false conjecture. Wherever William appears he is called William, and it is unthinkable under the conditions of the time that his figure should be given under the general name “knights.” Nor is the conventional figure leading forward the stallion an old man; he is, if anything, on the young side.

I will not here repeat what I have said elsewhere with regard to the accoutrement of the knight, though it bears out in this particular panel very strongly the conclusions of the Introduction as to the age of the document.

The next two panels (55 and 56) are very interesting because they show by what conventions the artist expresses the act of deployment. As long as the cavalry are marching in column of route he puts each figure only slightly overlapping the next, and suggests a walking space for the mounts; to express deployment or formation into a broad column of attack, as he has not the mastery of perspective, he puts the horses at the gallop and separates them much further one from the other.

The next point of interest in these panels is the personality of William bearing not a sword or lance, but a staff of authority or mace; while behind him is a figure bearing a sceptre, and it is only behind him again that you have anything resembling the consecrated banner of the chroniclers. Here there is a conflict between the Tapestry and Wace, as well as a divergence between them, which shows (like the episode of the Breton War) that though our document is largely based upon Wace, it must also have other sources. For in the poem the consecrated banner is sent on before the host by William, and that indeed is what one would expect; while the interrogation of one Vital by William as to the results of his scouting, though it seems to have been an incident that struck some contemporary or other vividly, is not found in any of the chronicles. Who Vital was there is no sort of evidence to tell us. It was a name known in Normandy. It occurs on a charter of William’s brother in the list of witnesses, and again in Doomsday under the same lord. This Vital of the Tapestry points in the direction of the scouts (who appear as conventional figures in the 58th panel), and there is here a little piece of realism which is of great interest to those who have studied the field. It will be observed that these scouts are represented as standing upon the summit and the hither slopes of a hill while on the farther slope you have trees conventionally represented. This hill, from which the scouts caught sight of Harold’s army (which had marched up the day before and taken position after that splendid advance from London—one of the most rapid in history) was the hill now known as Telham Hill. The ridge on which Telham farm stands was the summit beyond which the scouts did not advance, and the wood on the slope immediately below is the wood represented in this panel. In the next panel (59), as the inscription tells us, the converse is going on in Harold’s case, and his scouts (represented as being on foot) come to tell Harold, who is mounted, that they have established contact with the enemy. The 60th panel stands for the speech William made to his troops before the battle. Most of the chronicles mention this episode, and Wace in particular. You get again, in the next panel, the deployment suggested as before, and then a group of four panels (62–65 inclusive) bearing no inscription (the words above them being no more than the continuation of the legend above William’s speech: “That they should prepare themselves for battle against the English army both courageously and with art”). And these four panels are the effort of the artist, with such means as he had at his disposal, to give some conception of the order of battle.

Now we know what that order was. There were three columns of attack, consisting of the fully armed and mounted knights. That on the left was composed of the Bretons in the main, and had the duty of charging over the space now occupied by, or neighbouring to, the pond in Battle Abbey park. That on the left, which was to charge the steepest part of the hill, was to cross the ground on which the station has been built in modern times; it was a column mainly French and led by Roger of Montmorency. The central column, which was to take the sharp hill between the two others, was composed mainly of Normans and was led by William himself. Upon the jutting promontory of the height which these three columns were to attack, stood the Saxons on foot, depending largely upon the axe as a defensive weapon, but also upon the throwing-spear or javelin, and to some extent upon the sword. In front of the attacking army was scattered in open order a line of archers, whose function was the permanent service of the missile weapon, to wit, to shake the enemy’s infantry, upon which, so shaken, the cavalry should charge.[5]

Now all this the artist has attempted to represent. You have the attack represented both to the right and to the left and falling upon a body which faces two fronts; this is to symbolise the convergence of the three columns upon the semicircular front of the Saxon position upon Battle Hill. No particular figures are given; not even Harold is to be distinguished. Some critics too ingenious have discovered in the head of the Norman charge the person of Taillefer, “Iron-shear,” who certainly rode out before the army singing his song of Roncesvalles and tossing his sword (or by another account, his lance) into the air. There is nothing of this in the Tapestry.

The next two panels (66 and 67) give the death of the two brothers of Harold. Apart from the introduction of the figures of these two princes, Lewine and Gyrth, the interest of these panels also lies in the accoutrements. Thus on four of the charging French knights you see the crossed garters which bound the leg below the suit of mail, and in the hands of one of the English you see the round shield with a boss, which will reappear in the scene of the death of Harold. I would say tentatively and subject to correction, that this symbolised something old-fashioned in the Saxon accoutrement. In the border below, the same type of accoutrement, the round shield with the boss, reappears twice among the dead bodies. Gyrth and Lewine were standing near Harold, and one chronicle makes William himself fell Gyrth with a blow of his mace, but there is nothing of this in the embroidery. There is no figure armed with a mace and no mention of William. The 68th panel is the liveliest attempt the artist makes anywhere to represent the heat of the attack. It speaks for itself in the exaggerated catastrophes of the mounts and of their riders; but what should be particularly noted is the representation of the Hill of Battle, the horse stumbling at the approach of it and the defence by the Saxon footmen upon the summit.

With the 69th panel we approach the attempts in the latter part of the Tapestry to introduce persons. This attempt has led to a considerable historical controversy, for while some points in the portraiture are obvious, others, as will be seen in a moment, lend themselves to discussion.

First we have, in the 69th panel itself, Odo of Bayeux, the Bishop, William’s brother, with the characteristically French inscription, “Pueros suos,” by way of saying “his men.” “Here Odo, the Bishop, holding a stick, heartens his men,” or literally, “his children.” So the modern French army term, “mes enfants” for “men.” All this is quite clear; but the next panel (No. 70) has led to the controversy of which I speak. Note here three men at the charge. The first brandishes a sword, the second has a mace or sceptre in his hand, and is lifting the nasal of his helm, and the third holds a lance and pennon or, as the French then called it, a Gonfanon. Above the group is written, “Here is Duke William.” It is fairly established that Wace’s poem (which the panels of this part of the Tapestry follow with great fidelity) is here abandoned by the artist and the account of Benoit de Saint More is followed. The incident is, of course, that of William showing his face to his followers when it was feared he had fallen. Further, the first figure carrying the pennon is certainly intended for Eustace of Boulogne. Above his head, in one of the few fragments that have suffered mutilation, is the beginning and ending of the word Eustatius (E——TIUS); while the clear writing of the inscription round the central figure and the obvious reference to the passage in Benoit de Saint More, coupled with the fact that the central figure bears a mace or sceptre, not a sword, leave no doubt that it is William that is intended. It is worth remembering in connection with the date of the Tapestry that the emphasizing of the part which Eustace of Boulogne played in the battle is peculiar to the twelfth-century chroniclers.

The next three panels are bringing the battle to an end. “Here,” says the inscription, “the French fight and slay those who were with Harold.” The number of armorial shields, and their presence even, on the Saxon side is noteworthy, and the reappearance of the round shield with the boss in the border; further, that the archers have at last got home, is indicated in the arrows that have struck the shields, and in the full quivers of the border. The stripping of the bodies of the slain by the camp followers is equally indicative of the stage the fight has reached; and in the next panel (the 74th) you have one of the last episodes, the death of Harold himself. Harold is introduced twice: first, standing near his standard pulling from his face the arrow that has struck it; next, cut down by a mounted horseman, who strikes him on the thigh with his sword. That exactly follows Wace point for point, for his poem tells us first that Harold was struck in the eye by an arrow and that he pulled it out, and that then one came, a knight, who struck him on the thigh with a sword, wounding him to the bone; that at the same moment the standard fell to earth, and that the men “then killed Harold.”

The last two panels (75 and 76) are the breaking of the ranks and the flight. They need no comment save perhaps one note: the conventional tree in the last panel may well enough stand for the wood of the Weald which lay behind the Saxon position, and into which the rout pressed as darkness fell.

It has been suggested that the Tapestry continued further than the point at which it now ends, both because it is somewhat frayed at that end and because in the description of another Tapestry (lost) the account of the day following the battle is given.

What seems to me to prove definitely that the Tapestry did end almost exactly where its frayed edge terminates it to-day, is the fact that it was exactly of a length to go round the nave of Bayeux Cathedral, and that the measurements of the existing stuff correspond with that length.

Printed in France.

● Transcriber’s Notes: ○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected. ○ Typographical errors were silently corrected. ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book. ○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).

End of Project Gutenberg's The Book of the Bayeux Tapestry, by Hilaire Belloc