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But with all this we have little to do, and one episode must suffice. The starkest warrior among the rebels was Hardrez, Lord of Bayeux, and he, like many another, had sworn to slay William that day with his own hands. The oath had proved fatal to others before it did to him, but at length his turn came. Young Duke William saw him from afar, and with lance in rest made for him at a gallop. One of the knights who had followed Hardrez to battle charged at him in mid-course. The next moment horse and man went rolling in the grass, and William, dropping his splintered lance, drew his sword, and, the Lord of Bayeux coming up at the instant, he drove the good steel with one shrewd, strong thrust through mail and flesh and bone, and Hardrez never spoke again.

That stroke won William his dukedom, and the Chronicler, though a man of Bayeux himself, tells in stirring lines how the young lord and his faithful knights hunted the flying rebels off the field and rode them down like sheep.

This was not the last fight that William had for the mastery of his own land, but it left his hands free to begin the work that he had set himself to do, and he did it. To him unity was strength, and he was ready to go to any lengths to get it. His methods then, as afterwards in England, were severe—we should call them brutal nowadays, but these days are not those.