"Of the details of that awful day [Sept. 25, 1066] we have no authentic record. We have indeed a glorious description [in the Heimskringla of Snorro Sturleson], conceived in the highest spirit of the warlike poetry of the North; but it is a description which, when critically examined, proves to be hardly more worthy of belief than a battle-piece in the Iliad. ... At least we know that the long struggle of that day was crowned by complete victory on the side of England. The leaders of the invading host lay each man ready for all that England had to give him, his seven feet of English ground. There Harold of Norway, the last of the ancient Sea-Kings, yielded up that fiery soul which had braved death in so many forms and in so many lands. ... There Tostig, the son of Godwine, an exile and a traitor, ended, in crime and sorrow a life which had begun with promises not less bright than that of his royal brother. ... The whole strength of the Northern army was broken; a few only escaped by flight, and found means to reach the ships at Riccall." _E. A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest of England, chapter 14, section. 4._ ENGLAND: A. D. 1066 (October). The Norman invasion and battle of Senlac or Hastings. The battle of Stamford-bridge was fought on Monday, September 25, A. D. 1066. Three days later, on the Thursday, September 28, William of Normandy landed his more formidable army of invasion at Pevensey, on the extreme southeastern coast. The news of William's landing reached Harold, at York, on the following Sunday, it is thought, and his victorious but worn and wasted army was led instantly back, by forced marches, over the route it had traversed no longer than the week before. Waiting at London a few days for fresh musters to join him, the English king set out from that city October 12, and arrived on the following day at a point seven miles from the camp which his antagonist had entrenched at Hastings. Meantime the Normans had been cruelly ravaging the coast country, by way of provoking attack. Harold felt himself driven by the devastation they committed to face the issue of battle without waiting for a stronger rally. "Advancing near enough to the coast to check William's ravages, he intrenched himself on the hill of Senlac, a low spur of the Sussex Downs, near Hastings, in a position which covered London, and forced the Norman army to concentrate. With a host subsisting by pillage, to concentrate is to starve, and no alternative was left to William but a decisive victory or ruin. Along the higher ground that leads from Hastings the Duke led his men in the dim dawn of an October morning to the mound of Telham. It was from this point, that the Normans saw the host of the English gathered thickly behind a rough trench and a stockade on the height of Senlac.