So rapidly did Harold move, that he caught the Northmen quite unprepared, and came upon them at Stamford Bridge, close to York, when they least expected him. There he defeated the invaders in a great battle. Its details are unfortunately lost, for the noble Norwegian saga that gives the story of Hardrada's fall was written too long after to be trusted as good history. It tells how the English king rode forward to the invading army, and, calling to his brother, offered him pardon and a great earldom. But Tostig asked what his friend Harald of Norway should receive. "Seven feet of English earth, seeing that he is taller than other men," answered Harold of England. Then Tostig cried aloud that he would never desert those who had helped him in his day of need, and the fight began. We know that both the rebel earl and the Norse king fell, that the raven banner of the Vikings was taken, and that the remnant only of their host escaped. It is said that they came in three hundred ships, and fled in twenty-four. [Sidenote: =Landing of the Normans.=] Harold of England was celebrating his victory at York by a great feast a few nights after the battle of Stamford Bridge, when a message was brought him that William of Normandy had crossed the Channel and landed in Sussex with a hundred thousand men at his back. Harold hurried southward with his house-carles, bidding the Earls Eadwine and Morcar bring on the levies of Mercia and Northumbria to his aid as fast as they might. But the envious sons of Aelfgar betrayed their brother-in-law, and followed so slowly that they never overtook him. Harold marched rapidly on London, and gathered up the fyrd of East Anglia, Kent, and Wessex, so that he reached the coast with a considerable army, though it was one far inferior in numbers to William's vast host. Not a man from Mercia or Northumbria was with him; but the levies of the southern shires, where the house of Godwine was so well loved, were present in full force. [Sidenote: =The battle of Hastings.=]