As neither the horrors nor the gallantry exhibited on a battle-field can be comprehended by a general description, it may be well here to introduce an account of one or two of the individual encounters occurring at this period, with which Wace supplies us.
“The Normans were playing their part well, when an English knight came rushing up, having in his company a hundred men furnished with various arms. He wielded a northern hatchet, with the blade a full foot long; and was well armed after his manner, being tall, bold, and of noble carriage. In the front of the battle, where the Normans thronged most, he came bounding on swifter than a stag, many Normans falling before him and his company. He rushed straight upon a Norman, who was armed, and riding on a war-horse, and tried with a hatchet of steel to cleave his helmet; but the blow miscarried, and the sharp blade glanced down before the saddle-bow, driving through the horse’s neck down to the ground, so that both horse and master fell together to the earth. I know not whether the Englishman struck another blow; but the Normans who saw the stroke were astonished, and about to abandon the assault, when Roger de Montgomery came galloping up, with his lance set, and heeding not the long-handled axe which the Englishman wielded aloft, struck him down, and left him stretched upon the ground. Then Roger cried out ‘Frenchmen, strike; the day is ours!’ And again a fierce _melée_ was to be seen, with many a blow of lance and sword; the English still defending themselves, killing the horses, and cleaving the shields.”
“There was a French soldier of noble mien, who sat his horse gallantly. He spied two Englishmen who were also carrying themselves boldly. They were both of them men of great worth, and had become companions in arms and fought together, the one protecting the other. They bore two long and broad bills, and did great mischief to the Normans, killing both horses and men. The French soldier looked at them and their bills, and was sore alarmed; for he was afraid of losing his good horse, the best that he had, and would willingly have turned to some other quarter, if it would not have looked like cowardice. Fearing the two bills, he raised his shield by the ‘enarmes,’ and struck one of the Englishmen with his lance on the breast, so that the iron passed out at the back. At the moment that he fell, the lance broke, and the Frenchman seized the mace that hung at his right side, and struck the other Englishman a blow that completely fractured his scull.”