The
first attack of the Normans was desperate, but was received with equal
valor by the English; and after a furious combat, which remained long
undecided, the former, overcome by the difficulty of the ground, and
hard pressed by the enemy, began first to relax their vigor, then to
retreat; and confusion was spreading among the ranks; when William, who
found himself on the brink of destruction, hastened, with a select band,
to the relief of his dismayed forces. His presence restored the action;
the English were obliged to retire with loss; and the duke, ordering his
second line to advance, renewed the attack with fresh forces and with
redoubled courage. Finding that the enemy aided by the advantage of
ground, and animated by the example of their prince, still made a
vigorous resistance, he tried a stratagem which was very delicate in
its management, but which seemed advisable in his desperate situation,
where, if he gained not a decisive victory, he was totally undone: he
commanded his troops to make a hasty retreat, and to allure the enemy
from their ground by the appearance of flight. The artifice succeeded
against those unexperienced soldiers, who, heated by the action, and
sanguine in their hopes, precipitately followed the Normans into the
plain.
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