Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/481

 England in the Middle Ages 409 awaited the coming of the enemy. They had few horses and Battle of fought on foot with their battle-axes. The Normans had horses, October^ which they had brought across in their ships, and were supplied ^°^^ with bows and arrows. The English fought bravely and re- pulsed the Normans as they tried to press up the hillside. But at last they were thrown into confusion, and Iving Harold was killed by a Norman arrow which pierced his eye. William thus destroyed the English army in this famous battle William of Hastings, and the rightful English king was dead. But the atTondon Norman duke was not satisfied to take possession of England as a conqueror merely. In a few weeks he managed to induce a number of influential nobles and several bishops to agree to accept him as king, and Eondon opened its gates to him. On Christmas Day, 1066, he was chosen king by an assembly in Westminster Abbey (where Harold had been elected a year before) and was duly crowned. In the Norman town of Bayeux a strip of embroidery is pre- The Bayeux served some two hundred and thirty feet long and eighteen ^^^^ ^'^ inches wide. If it was not made by Queen Matilda, William's wife, and her ladies, as some have supposed, it belongs at any rate to the time of the Norman conquest of England, which it pictures with much detail. The accompanying colored repro- duction of two scenes shows the Normans landing with their horses from their ships on the English coast and starting for the battle field of Hastings, and, in the second scene, the battle in actual progress ; the English are on their hill, trying to drive back the invaders. While the ladies could not draw very well, historians are able to get some ideas of the time from their embroidery. We cannot trace the history of the opposition and the revolts of the great nobles which William had to meet within the next few years. His position was rendered doubly difficult by troubles which he encountered on the Continent as Duke of Normandy. Suffice it to say, that he succeeded in maintaining himself against all his enemies.