He hastened by quick marches to reach this new
invader; but though he was reenforced at London and other places with
fresh troops, he found himself also weakened by the desertion of his old
soldiers, who from fatigue and discontent secretly withdrew from their
colors. His brother Gurth, a man of bravery and conduct, began to
entertain apprehensions of the event; and remonstrated with the king,
that it would be better policy to prolong the war; at least, to spare
his own person in the action. He urged to him that the desperate
situation of the duke of Normandy made it requisite for that prince to
bring matters to a speedy decision, and put his whole fortune on the
issue of a battle; but that the king of England, in his own country,
beloved by his subjects, provided with every supply, had more certain
and less dangerous means of insuring to himself the victory; that the
Norman troops, elated on the one hand with the highest hopes, and seeing
on the other no resource in case of a discomfiture, would fight to
the last extremity; and being the flower of all the warriors of the
continent, must be regarded as formidable to the English; that if their
first fire, which is always the most dangerous, were allowed to languish
for want of action, if they were harassed with small skirmishes,
straitened in provisions, and fatigued with the bad weather and deep
roads during the winter season which was approaching, they must fall an
easy and a bloodless prey to their enemy; that if a general action were
delayed, the English, sensible of the imminent danger to which their
properties, as well as liberties, were exposed from those rapacious
invaders, would hasten from all quarters to his assistance, and would
render his army invincible; that, at least, if he thought it necessary
to hazard a battle, he ought not to expose his own person out reserve,
in case of disastrous accidents, some resource to the liberty and
independence of the kingdom; and that having once been so unfortunate
as to be constrained to swear, and that upon the holy relics, to support
the pretensions of the duke of Normandy, it were better that the command
of the army should be intrusted to another, who, not being bound by
those sacred ties, might give the soldiers more assured hopes of a
prosperous issue to the combat.
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