possible to believe that William could
have found transports for the conveyance of fifty thousand war-horses
across the Channel.

For a long time the winds were adverse, and the Duke employed the
interval that passed before he could set sail in completing the
organization in and improving the discipline of his army, which he seems
to have brought into the same state of perfection as was seven centuries
and a half afterward the boast of another army assembled on the same
coast, and which Napoleon designed for a similar descent upon England.

It was not till the approach of the equinox that the wind veered from
the northeast to the west, and gave the Normans an opportunity of
quitting the weary shores of the Dive. They eagerly embarked and set
sail, but the wind soon freshened to a gale, and drove them along the
French coast to St. Valery, where the greater part of them found
shelter; but many of their vessels were wrecked, and the whole coast of
Normandy was strewn with the bodies of the drowned.

William's army began to grow discouraged and averse to the enterprise,
which the very elements thus seemed to fight against; though, in
reality, the northeast wind, which had cooped them so long at the mouth
of the Dive, and the western gale, which had forced them into St.
Valery, were the best possible friends to the invaders. They prevented
the Normans from crossing the Channel until the Saxon King and his army
of defence had been called away from the Sussex coast to encounter
Harald Hardrada in Yorkshire; and also until a formidable English fleet,
which by King Harold's orders had been cruising in the Channel to
intercept the Normans, had been obliged to disperse temporarily for the
purpose of refitting and taking in fresh stores of provisions.

Duke William used every expedient to reanimate the drooping spirits of
his men at St. Valery; and at last he caused the body of the patron
saint of the place to be exhumed and carried in solemn procession, while
the whole assemblage of soldiers, mariners, and appurtenant priests
implored the saint's intercession for a change of wind. That very night
the wind veered, and enabled the mediaeval Agamemnon to quit his Aulis.

With full sails, and a following southern breeze, the Norman armada left
the French shores and steered for England. The invaders crossed an
undefended sea, and found an undefended coast. It was in Pevensey Bay,
in Sussex, at Bulverhithe, between the castle of Pev