r corps got fairly engaged in the awful
work of the day. For ten long hours there reigned over the whole field
one wide-spread scene of havoc and death--every soul among all those
countless thousands delivered up to the supreme dominion of the most
dreadful passions, excited to a perfect phrensy of hatred, rage, and
revenge, and all either mercilessly killing others, or dying themselves
in agony and despair. When night came, the Normans were every where
victorious. They were in full possession of the field, and they rode
triumphantly to and fro through Harold's camp, leaping their horses over
the bodies of the dead and dying which covered the ground. Those of King
Harold's followers that had escaped the slaughter of the day fled in
hopeless confusion toward the north, where the flying masses strewed the
roads for miles with the bodies of men who sank down on the way, spent
with wounds or exhausted by fatigue.

In the morning, William marshaled his men on the field, and called over
the names of the officers and men, as they had been registered in
Normandy, for the purpose of ascertaining who were killed. While this
melancholy ceremony was going on, two monks came in, sent from the
remains of the English army, and saying that King Harold was missing,
and that it was rumored that he had been slain. If so, his body must be
lying somewhere, they said, upon the field, and they wished for
permission to make search for it. The permission was granted. With the
aid of some soldiers they began to explore the ground, turning over and
examining every lifeless form which, by the dress or the armor, might
seem to be possibly the king's. Their search was for a long time vain;
the ghastly faces of the dead were so mutilated and changed that nobody
could be identified. At length, however, a woman who had been in
Harold's family, and knew his person more intimately than they, found
and recognized the body, and the monks and the soldiers carried it away.

* * * * *

The battle of Hastings sealed and settled the controversy in respect to
the English crown. It is true that the adherents of Harold, and also
those of Edgar Atheling, made afterward various efforts to rally their
forces and recover the kingdom, but in vain. William advanced to London,
fortified himself there, and made excursions from that city as a centre
until he reduced the island to his sway. He was crowned at length, at
Westminster Abbey, wit