The Collected Works of Hilaire Belloc. Hilaire Belloc

      48

      49

      50

      51

      52

      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.

      53

      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.

      54

      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.

      55

      56

      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.

      57

      58

      59

      60

      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