CHAPTER V.


On the broad plain between Pevensey and Hastings, Duke William had
arrayed his armaments. In the rear he had built a castle of wood, all
the framework of which he had brought with him, and which was to serve
as a refuge in case of retreat. His ships he had run into deep water,
and scuttled; so that the thought of return, without victory, might be
banished from his miscellaneous and multitudinous force. His outposts
stretched for miles, keeping watch night and day against surprise.
The ground chosen was adapted for all the manoeuvres of a cavalry
never before paralleled in England nor perhaps in the world,--almost
every horseman a knight, almost every knight fit to be a chief. And
on this space William reviewed his army, and there planned and
schemed, rehearsed and re-formed, all the stratagems the great day
might call forth. But more careful, and laborious, and minute, was he
in the manoeuvre of a feigned retreat. Not ere the acting of some
modern play, does the anxious manager more elaborately marshal each
man, each look, each gesture, that are to form a picture on which the
curtain shall fall amidst deafening plaudits than did the laborious
captain appoint each man, and each movement, in his lure to a valiant
foe:--The attack of the foot, their recoil, their affected panic,
their broken exclamations of despair;--their retreat, first partial
and reluctant, next seemingly hurried and complete,--flying, but in
flight carefully confused:--then the settled watchword, the lightning
rally, the rush of the cavalry from the ambush; the sweep and hem
round the pursuing foe, the detachment of levelled spears to cut off
the Saxon return to the main force, and the lost ground,--were all