Meanwhile the flying Norman infantry had in other parts of the field turned upon their pursuers, and here the sword proved the better weapon, for the rash English were cut to pieces. Then, somewhere about three o’clock in the afternoon, began the most terrible attack of that dreadful day, in the desperate charge made by William, his brothers Odo and Robert, and their attendant knights, against the sturdy group around Harold and the English standard. William, on horseback, sought out the English King, and might have met him face to face, had not the King’s brother, Gurth, flung a spear at him, which, although it missed the greater mark, brought down his horse. Unlucky, ill-aimed blow! It brought Gurth and William face to face, afoot, and presently the English Earl was lying dead from a blow of the Duke’s mace. Near by, and almost at the same time, fell Harold’s other brother, Leofwin. The English fortunes were indeed running low, but the battle was not yet decided. Still that devoted phalanx of axemen hewed down most of those who approached, and the day was neither lost nor won. It was then that the ill-judged pursuit made by the English a little earlier bore bitter fruit—the sorrow of it! William had noted its effect, and now that his direct attacks were like to fail, he had recourse to the wily trick of a feigned flight. Accordingly, to his instructions, a wing of his army turned tail and fled, as though in panic; and immediately, learning nothing from that earlier disaster, a portion of the English came down after them. It was the turning-point of the day, for the ground the English had left was just the one end of the hill where the rise was appreciably less steep, and more easily to be charged up by the Norman cavalry. The fight down in the valley between the pretended fugitives and their pursuers meanwhile went forward with varying fortunes. The flying Frenchmen turned, as before, but this time the English seized on an outlying hill, and although they fell, they fell in company with their foes. In their turn, they inveigled the French horsemen into charging upon them into an unsuspected ravine, where they fell in a mass and were despatched to the last man, so that the old chroniclers tell us, and the Bayeux Tapestry shows, how the hollow was filled with the dead. [Illustration: LAST STAND OF THE ENGLISH. _Bayeux Tapestry._]