Now the scene shifts once more. On a spur of the South Downs, where Battle Abbey now stands, you see the embattled array of the English. The hill of Senlac, on which they have posted themselves, slopes steeply in front, less steeply on the right, and gently on the left. On the summit of the hill the host of the English is thickly gathered behind a rough trench and a stockade. There is marshy ground on the right, but the left is the weakest part of the position, and here are mustered Harold’s stout hus-carles, doughty warriors in full armour, wielding huge axes. Here, too, are the banners of the king—the Golden Dragon of Wessex and the Fighting Man. The rest of the ground is occupied by the half-armed rustics who have flocked to Harold, and are bent on striking a good blow against the invader. Out from the Norman host spurs the minstrel Taillefer, singing the song of Roland, and Oliver, and the peers who died at Roncesvalles. As he sings he tosses his sword into the air and juggles with it famously. Then he puts his horse to the gallop, and strikes his lance through an English breast. He smites another with his sword, shouting challenges to the foe. The English close round him, and the first Norman has fallen on the fatal field. A shower of arrows from the archers begins the fray, and then the footmen and the Norman knights, to the loud braying of horns, charge up the slopes, crying, “God be our help!” The charge breaks vainly on the stockade and shield-wall, behind which the English ply axe and javelin with fierce shouts of “Out! out!” Back go the footmen and back go the knights, leaving dead and wounded before that fatal barrier. Again and again the duke rallies them; the fury of fight surges in his veins, and with headlong valour he spurs up the slopes to the fierce attack. No breach can be made in that wall. His Bretons, entangled in the marshy ground, break into disorder, and panic seizes his army as the cry goes round that the duke is slain. William bars the way and checks the flight of the fugitives with savage blows. He tears off his helmet. “I am alive,” he shouts, “and by God’s will I will conquer yet.” Maddened by another repulse, he spurs right into the thick of the fight. His horse goes down beneath him, but his terrible mace circles in the air, and his assailants are felled, never to rise again. Again he mounts, again he is unhorsed, and a blow of his hand hurls to the ground an unmannerly rider who will not lend him a steed. William’s terrible onslaughts have dispelled the panic, but the issue of the battle still hangs in the balance.