But honor to their very names! Honor to the last heroes of the old
English race!
These valiant gentlemen, with the housecarles whom, more or fewer, they
would bring with them, constituted a formidable force, as after years
proved well. But having got his men, Hereward's first care was, doubtless,
to teach them that art of war of which they, like true Englishmen, knew
nothing.
The art of war has changed little, if at all, by the introduction of
gunpowder. The campaigns of Hannibal and Caesar succeeded by the same
tactics as those of Frederic or Wellington; and so, as far as we can
judge, did those of the master-general of his age, William of Normandy.
But of those tactics the English knew nothing. Their armies were little
more than tumultuous levies, in which men marched and fought under local
leaders, often divided by local jealousies. The commissariats of the
armies seem to have been so worthless, that they had to plunder friends as
well, as foes as they went along; and with plunder came every sort of
excess: as when the northern men marching down to meet Harold Godwinsson,
and demand young Edwin as their earl, laid waste, seemingly out of mere
brute wantonness, the country round Northampton, which must have been in
Edwin's earldom, or at least in that of his brother Morcar.
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