Читать книгу The Conquerors: The Pageant of England - Thomas B. Costain - Страница 6

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It was late in September, the year was 1066, and that section of the great north highway which crosses the Aire and the Wharfe and rolls on to the city of York was black with marching soldiers. In the van were the Thingmen, the trained troops who formed the King’s bodyguard, proudly carrying the Standard of the Fighting Man, the personal flag of Harold. The King marched with them, this great son of Earl Godwine who had been elected by the Witanagemot to succeed Edward the Confessor, the first man of the people to wear a crown. His presence lent strength to stiffening muscles and persuaded the racing squadrons to pour forth from not too melodious throats the battle songs of Assanduan in full confidence that victory lay ahead of them.

They marched on foot, these space-devouring Anglo-Saxons, battle-ax on shoulder and kite-shaped shield on arm, their knee-length tunics gray with dust, their legs bare (only the leaders wore the bracco or cross-gartering), their gauntlet-topped buskins cut to ribbons of leather. They were of medium height and inclined to a squareness of build. Under their caps, which curved to hornlike points, they had bristling manes of fair hair. Their faces were broad and stolid in expression. But look at them well, these dusty warriors who have marched from London in less than five days. In spite of their cloddish appearance and their obvious lack of learning, these men and their fathers before them had been groping toward an understanding of two great principles; first, that kings are the servants and not the masters of men, and, second, that in all things the will of the majority expressed through a properly constituted assemblage must prevail.

They did not know it, but it was to defend these beliefs that the soldiers of England were marching on sore and blistered feet up the great north highway.