To crush the heart of the people by
massacres and mutilations and devastations was the only hope of the
invader; and thoroughly he did his work whenever he had a chance.
CHAPTER XXV.
HOW HEREWARD FOUND A WISER MAN IN ENGLAND THAN HIMSELF.
There have been certain men so great, that he who describes them in words,
much more pretends to analyze their inmost feelings, must be a very great
man himself, or incur the accusation of presumption. And such a great man
was William of Normandy,--one of those unfathomable master-personages who
must not be rashly dragged on any stage. The genius of a Bulwer, in
attempting to draw him, took care, with a wise modesty, not to draw him in
too much detail,--to confess always that there was much beneath and behind
in William's character which none, even of his contemporaries, could
guess. And still more modest than Bulwer is this chronicler bound to be.
But one may fancy, for once in a way, what William's thoughts were, when
they brought him the evil news of York. For we know what his acts were;
and he acted up to his thoughts.
Hunting he was, they say, in the forest of Dean, when first he heard that
all England, north of the Watling Street, had broken loose, and that he
was king of only half the isle.
Did he--as when, hunting in the forest of Rouen, he got the news of
Harold's coronation--play with his bow, stringing and unstringing it
nervously, till he had made up his mighty mind? Then did he go home to his
lodge, and there spread on the rough oak board a parchment map of England,
which no child would deign to learn from now, but was then good enough to
guide armies to victory, because the eyes of a great general looked upon
it?
As he pored over the map, by the light of bog-deal torch or rush candle,
what would he see upon it?
Three separate blazes of insurrection, from northwest to east, along the
Watling Street.
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