Introduction
Edward Freeman — Liberal politician, Balkan nationalist, and Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford — was a man of vigorous (and at times objectionable) opinions, but in the following passage he puts that passion to good use. He casts an eye for us upon the aftermath of the Battle of Hastings in 1066, the day when William of Normandy seized the English crown from Harold Godwinson.
WILLIAM now came back to the hill, where all resistance had long been over. He looked around, we are told, on the dead and dying thousands, not without a feeling of pity that so many men had fallen, even as a sacrifice to his own fancied right. But the victory was truly his own; in the old phrase of our Chroniclers, the Frenchmen had possession of the place of slaughter.
A place of slaughter indeed it was, where, from morn till twilight, the axe and javelin of England, the lance and bow of Normandy, had done their deadly work at the bidding of the two mightiest captains upon earth. Dead and dying men were heaped around, and nowhere were they heaped so thickly as around the fallen Standard of England. There, where the flower of England's nobility and soldiery lay stretched in death, there, where the banner of the Fighting Man now lay beaten to the ground,* the Conqueror knelt, he gave his thanks to God, and bade his own banner be planted as the sign of the victory which he had won.
See a recreation of the banner at Wikimedia Commons.
Précis
Victorian Professor of History Edward Freeman described the aftermath of the Battle of Hastings in 1066. He recalled how, after the fighting was over, William the Conqueror had returned to the hill where the English standard had been captured, to give public thanks for victory and to plant his own standard there among the dead and dying. (57 / 60 words)
Victorian Professor of History Edward Freeman described the aftermath of the Battle of Hastings in 1066. He recalled how, after the fighting was over, William the Conqueror had returned to the hill where the English standard had been captured, to give public thanks for victory and to plant his own standard there among the dead and dying.
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