dashed forward against the hostile forces before his brother’s arrival, at last boldly, after the manner of a wild boar, guided the Christian forces against the foe as had been determined, though still the king had not come. Thus relying on the guidance of God, and supported by His help, with the lines drawn up closely, he moves forward the standard with speed against the enemy. But to those who know not the place it must be explained that the site of the battle was unequal for the belligerents, for the pagans had occupied beforehand a higher position; but the Christians drew up their lines from a lower place. There was also, in the same place, a single thorn-tree of very small size, which we ourselves have seen with our own eyes. Around this, therefore, the hostile armies, all with a great shout, meet together in conflict, the one acting most wickedly, the other to fight for life and friends and country. And when they fought for some time, fiercely and very cruelly on both sides, the pagans, by the divine judgment, could endure the attack of the Christians no longer; and the chief part of their forces being slain, they took to flight disgracefully. And in this place one of the two pagan kings and five jarls were slain; and many thousands on the pagan side, both in that place and along the whole breadth of the plain of Æscesdune, where they had been everywhere scattered, were slain far and wide. For there fell their king Baegsaeg and Jarl Sidroc the elder and Jarl Sidroc the younger, and Jarl Obsbern, and Jarl Fraena, and Jarl Hareld; and the whole army of the pagans was put to flight till the night, and even to the following day, until those who escaped arrived at the citadel, for the Christians pursued them until night and overthrew them everywhere.” “Never before or since,” says a Saxon writer later on, “was ever such slaughter known, since the Saxons first gained England by their armies.” All the next day the rout was followed up, until the shattered remnants gained the shelter of their fort. Whether it was absolutely abandoned by the Danes after their defeat is doubtful; but it is recorded that fourteen days later Alfred and Ethelred suffered a reverse at Basing, which shows, at anyrate, that some portion of the enemy’s forces had retreated to the south. To meet the last invasion of foreign blood, the Anglo-Saxons had, by that time, a military organisation which differed but little from the hosts that William of Normandy brought against Harold the king at Senlac. There had been much intercommunication between the British Isles and the mainland. Both armies were armed and equipped in much the same way. Their leaders wore the same kind of armour, and there was little to distinguish between them, save that the Norman’s chief strength was in his cavalry, that of Harold in his infantry. The Bayeux Tapestry shows both Harold and William clad in the same attire.