In spite of the determination observable from a great distance upon the
faces of the tall Saxon line, William with characteristic lack of
balance opened the action by ordering a charge uphill with cavalry
alone; it was a piece of tactics absurdly incongruous and one even he
would never have attempted had he understood the foe that was before
him, or the fate to which that foe had doomed him.
The lesson dealt him was as immediate as it was severe. The foreigners
were thrust headlong down the hill, and a private letter tells us how
the Men of Kent in particular buffeted the Normans about "as though they
were boys." But even in the heat of this initial success Harold had the
self-command to order the retirement upon the main position: and with
troops such as his the order was equivalent to its execution.
This rude blow would have sufficed for any commander less vain than
William, but he seems to have lost all judgment in a fit of personal
vanity and to have ordered a second charge which could not but prove as
futile as the first, delivered as it was up a perfect glacis
strengthened by epaulements, reverses and countersunk galvon work and
one whose natural strength was heightened by the stockade which the
indomitable energy of Harold's troops had perfected in the early hours
of the morning. Many of the stakes in this, the reader may note with
pardonable pride, were of English oak--sharpened at the tip.
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