We have contemporary evidence which allows for more than 50,000 men upon Duke William’s side and something of the same sort upon Harold’s. The evidence not only of those who saw William’s host mustered and who must actually have handled the lists on the Norman side, such as the Duke’s secretary, William of Jumièges, but the evidence of topography also proves this. Pevensey, the harbour in which the great Norman fleet of 3,000 vessels moored, was a vast expanse of water comparable to Portsmouth to-day; you may still trace its limits accurately enough round the contour of the present marsh. The position held defensively at Hastings by Harold’s command is only just under a mile long and is one of the most clearly defined positions in Europe, absolutely unmistakable. Freeman, with no appreciation of military history, conceives this line of a mile (held by men closely interlocked and in dense formation capable of withstanding hurricanes of cavalry charges for nine hours) to have been held by a handful of men! It is the wildest nonsense, and yet it passed for a generation as history. Lastly, as an example of bias and charlatanry combined, you have the confident statement that Pope Sylvester had given a Bull to Duke William in support of the invasion. Here Freeman has at least the grace not to give a sham reference in a footnote, for the thing is completely false. If Freeman had taken the trouble or had had the science to look up the Bullarium, or even the letters and documents of Sylvester in Migne, he might have been spared the contempt of all competent critics. As it is he preferred a legendary piece of nonsense in a piece of popular verse to exact history. The motive through which Freeman invented this Bull was the motive of his place, time, and generation: hatred of the Catholic Church, that is, against the religion of the people with whom he was dealing, and a desire to satisfy the animus of his Victorian readers against the Papacy. In contrast to nonsense of this kind, haphazard, ill-evidenced and invented history, note the admirable description you will read in the following pages of the battle of Muret.